


120 Years of Motion

by lastofromance



Category: One Piece
Genre: Angel!Law, Can't be helped, Dark and obsessive romance, Dragon!Sabo, Explicit Sexual Content, Gore, Heavy Angst, Historic to present day fantasy/modern AU, Immortality, Law has existential issues, M/M, OOCness, Random folklore, Sabo speaks in prose, Self-Harm, Supernatural Elements, Temporary Character Death, Timelapses, but it does have a happy ending, opscifiandfantasy, soul mates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-10 23:33:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4412234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastofromance/pseuds/lastofromance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fallen angel Trafalgar Law was on the brink of immortality at its absolute worst, to the extent that life and death had no meaning and murder had become almost mechanical. For 120 years, Sabo, a vermilion dragon, was his one and only light in the darkness. They’d speak for hours and they’d intertwine through all hours of the night. They’d hold hands beneath the cherry blossoms falling in the Spring. For Law, Sabo would do anything -- <i>anything</i>. Even set the whole world on fire, if that is what he wanted.</p>
<p>But obsession is never healthy. And there is such a thing as loving someone too much.</p>
<p>Written for <a href="http://opscifiandfantasy.tumblr.com/">opscifiandfantasy</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I can't tell if this is the darkest thing I've ever written or the most romantic. Maybe both. XD When this idea came to me from another fic I was working on, it wouldn't leave me alone until I started writing it, and then it just didn't want to stop. I'd thought it'd be short. But naw. This is actually a one-shot, but the whole thing just grew legs and ran off into something so ridiculously long, I've split it up to give readers a break. This just exploded out into some serious feels. Although this doesn't reflect my Sabo/Law head-canons, but more random thoughts on them and tangles of heartstrings and 'what if's rattling in my brain. I want to thank [Darksinokaru](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Darksinokaru/profile) for listening to the bulk of my fretting and being supportive, and my dear friend Meghan for looking this over for me and reassuring me that my story made sense. XD
> 
> Although, I think the jury is still out on that one. My love/hate relationship with poetry is spilling out all over the place and the prose is VERY heavy in some places.
> 
> Recommended listening: Morgan Taylor Reid - Sweeter Sound [[x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpe65aWDeM0)]. This was a tremendous inspiration (and it shows).

Sabo was a light in the darkness.

A light that ' _I want to show you_.' So a dragon had once said to an angel in a voice no more than a hushed, excited whisper, ' _I want to show you, if you'll let me_.' His eyes were closed but the night was dark and mattered little -- the clouds curtained the stars from window-view, the moon would only show the blackened side of its face, and the world was pitch. This was okay. Sabo was vibrant. Exuberant. His emotions tingled across Law's searching fingers upon contact as they lay together in still moments of purposeless repose when the candle wicks that had accompanied them through the late hours had gone out, receded into pools of wax that spilled and spilled until they could take no more, the light swiftly dying away.

And though Law could see nothing, Sabo wanted to show him -- the world, the light, _everything_.

There was a history inside of his head, absent of the cynicism that should have come with it, that he could never express. Years and years, thousands of them worth of an outpouring of sound and voice and prose had left the capacity to properly express all of the typical ones broken. Words worth sharing, yet in the full of things, they could only be completely his own and no one else's. His version of the world was all made up of confused poetry, abstracts and metaphors, open to myriad interpretation.

A world where the stars in the sky swam with the visions in his eyes, masked by a perfect shade of cerulean irises where the sun should normally reside. A place where the moonlight trembled as if its face were reflected upon a gently lapping body of water that trickled along with the sound of Sabo's voice -- a voice feeling along Law's skin and sliding into places in his body that no one else could hope to arouse.

A voice working deeply into him the same way that fingers parted his body, spread him open to make way for his cock, slippery sliding inside of him. And Law put Sabo's hand into his own, allowing himself to be guided towards ecstasy while the other man's poetry was whispered hotly into his ear--

 _You_ , he said, a darkness that gives way to the light. _You_ , a siren's song that lures him onto jagged rocks and tears him asunder in the gentlest of all ways. _You_ , like a blessing that comes in infinite ways, so innumerable that he couldn't even begin to know where, to know how to count every aspect that is Law unto Sabo -- like a honeybee unto a flower, sifting the pollen of words from dainty feet and onto the stigma of an endless mental propagation.

 _You_ , Law then replied breathlessly, _you_ are a near-personification of every fantastic and lustrous thought he'd ever harbored towards any other living being. A seeming proverbial white light in the distance drawn so much closer to find sparkle and snowfall and moonlit waters and prisms refracting these things into all of the shapes that make up this solid and warm entity that is _you_.

 _You_ , Sabo, _no one else_ , he stuttered out as he came, twisting his body and spilling until he could take no more, like candles, like a dying light. A centuries-old dance, tried-and-true.

"Because it is our fate. Around you, around me, threads around our little fingers," Sabo groaned against the shell of his ear, breath puffing out, baring teeth as he resisted the urge to bite. To rip. To burn. So many urges kept in check. "So much that I wonder, if I pull back, how far will you drag? How much give is there? How much slack is there in the line between us?"

Too much, sometimes, that Law ran away just to see what would happen.

( _You_ , you're the one that gives me reason to be alive).

Sometimes, the thought of knowing how easily the dragon could reel him in scared him.

Made him afraid.

Made him idiotic.

Made him test the line, daring fate to rend them both taut.

 

\----

 

**November 30, 1995 - Shiretoko-hanto, Hokkaido --**

 

Pine needles crunched underfoot -- dead, but ever as fragrant as all life gone lifeless -- as a lone, tall and steady figure stepped through the woods, otherwise soundless. For a moment's pause, Trafalgar Law looked up towards the sky, to a bright moon that dared cast light upon his path of calm darkness as beads of cold perspiration peppered his brow. The stars, his ever-present and silent companions, twinkled their delighted motes of light at him, so like small children taunting him in their school-yard games and sing-song, skip-rope tragedy-rhymes of black death, mass murderings, and broken heads.

Because Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.

And everyone knew how well that worked out for them.

Still, celestial entities could do as they liked; they would, anyway, and it wasn't as if he ever really gave a damn. There were always those same stars, always that heatless moon, never different and always monotonous and boring despite what anyone else would have to say about them. There were cycles, a changeless pattern, always days and nights like these. Always an ethereal glow from thousands and thousands of kilometers away, seeming so much closer as though he could cup the moon, a delicate will-o-wisp of a celestial object, within his palm in eerie tranquility. If he could, he would crush it. Because it was useless. Waste. Garbage. Better off on a street corner waiting to be hauled away than elevated in the sky.

Better off incinerated. Better off in someone else's night.

It gave Law a shadow and that, too, he found uninspiring. Tranquil, perhaps, when even as he blinked, his shadow never did the same and stayed black beneath following footsteps. Not quite his protege so much as a silent stalker that liked watching him dress from the other side of a darkened window. Made his long legs even longer, alien, and lacking in finer detail. Made him look like nothing from afar. Nothing. Trash. _Garbage_. Boring, useless, like old television sets from bygone eras and static in the way it flickered rather than the nouveau, digitized blocks of pixels. Things with faces and antennas but no eyes.

Even still, he couldn't really deny that something was jostling through him to the core... feeling... just feeling. Even that was rare. The deeper meaning? A cutting silence, a voice that soothed, softening the night. Dark clouds full of responses trailed across the lower portion of the moon's pale face like some blushing young miss hiding her vapid, tittering affections behind a gloved hand. Like all stupid things that women had a tendency to say to him, he had no intention of listening, no ear for answerless insolence, and no patience for illuminations.

Lowering his eyes, he continued on his way, his path true though he was not fully aware of where exactly he was going -- not fully aware of where he came from half the time, sometimes head-over-heels and tripped over an inarticulate life ill-lived (if it would be called life -- some semblance thereof). Just as unintuitively, whichever, wherever, and whatever it was ahead of him, if it had ever mattered at all, was an unknown destination of a something that wordlessly called out to him. Or called him out. How did it matter? It really didn't.

He walked the earth for eternities.  
He walked the earth for minutes.  
He skid down the hallway of time on his ass like a slip-and-slide.  
They were all pretty much the same thing.

But this did eventuate in something -- there were eventualities, eventu-fucking-alities at some point in time out of all undertakings, even when they seemed entirely unavailing.

Full frontal, he came upon a clearing where a small, dilapidated hunting cabin stood slightly out of place, bygone, bygone and falling apart. The entire building seemed half-sunken and uneven with the forest floor and shutters that had once been painted a bright, cheerful color of grass-green's close relative were blistered, peeling, falling off of the rusted hinges along a window that flickered an orange glow of firelight from within. As much as he would have liked, it was pointless to wonder at its existence; he knew that he was meant to be there, a feeling... intangible (he didn't like that; he was a very hands-on kind of man). Indescribable, ineffable, with a draw that had pulled him through the forest on foot. Whatever it was, it was in there.

Overgrown grass brushed at his calves and dampened the hem of his jeans with dew and the smell of morning-wet and pine as he approached the ancient remains of what was once probably a comfortable, small place to be. The brittle, chipped glass doorknob was grasped with a slender hand and turned slowly, as if he meant to keep to the silence, as if not to startle the night. But actually, he didn't care one way or another.

It was locked.

Not that it really mattered.

Standing upon the shattered stoop, he placed a hand over the half-rotted wood and conjured a tiny bubble of his power to more-or-less obliterate the surroundings of the rusted old mechanism for it to drop to the ground. Door swinging open for him, welcoming a stranger into its mysteries kept within its shadowed hollow... probably wasn't the smartest thing that it could do, but he never left anything in his wake with much of a choice, did he? That was the way that food chains tended to work out.

Doors were typically pretty low on that.  
He was pretty low on that, too, not that he'd ever say it aloud.  
Humans were still lower.  
One or two steps below doors, maybe, but he liked to open up both.  
Liked to pick at what he could find inside.

For this one, for this instance of an inside, looked no better than its outside, but at least it offered some protection from the elements, albeit incredibly slight, drafty, and damp. It was spartan (whatever that meant; were the Spartans very spartan at all?) but a fire burned within and provided a bit of warmth, nonetheless.

Still, it wasn't quite warm enough. Not for the figure that lay in front of the hearth in a violently shivering heap on the dirty floors, huddling close to the blaze to steal heat into his thin, weary body. A squatter, he appeared to be, but it mattered little in the _why_ while Law was more intent on the _who_ and a familiar feeling that shook, shook, shook into him as though he were the one all filthy down to the bone -- as if the fire inside him were close to being extinguished if he did nothing to save this flickering little star ( _ashes, ashes, we all fall down_ ) of a soul.

He stepped close to the man, who likely sensed his presence despite that he made not a single sound. Perhaps the fire-backdropped quiver of his restless shadow spoke for him enough as it flopped about like some peter-pan-esque monstrosity attempting to escape. From beside his feet, a pair of pale blue eyes bleared open at him, stared simply, windows to the soul on any other man, perhaps, but he likened these to the strained echo of a stone cast into black pit (see how deep it goes? But there wasn't a single sounding reply). They were not afraid of him. But, to his surprise, there was a hidden little grain of sadness sunken down deep within, somewhere in ground coated for centuries in the fragrance of pine needles and... wildflowers. He could smell them in the air here, spicy and fresh and unsweetened.

With bated breath, he said nothing.

This was very unrewarding as the other man said nothing, as well.

But a cough broke the ice, a heave and shudder and closing of eyes -- he, as well, shookshook _shook_ but only inwardly as he shed his trepidation away from him like a bad suit and knelt beside the man, touching his hand against the skeletal frame of his face. So thin and fragile against his seemingly too-large hand. So hideous, so wane, and so lovely like all stars and moons and equally useless... it was almost painful to touch, electrically charged and an uproar surged through his blood like copper wires jump-starting his heart. His shadow, then, went far too still.

Who was he? He should know this.  
( _You are all dry, all insolent pens, all inkless feathers._ )  
What was he? He should know this.  
( _You are empty; to the brink of extinction and made whole by my half._ )  
And this feeling? He should know this.  
( _Don't kill anymore, Law. Please._ )

There was something wholly surreal in the air that stirred about the slight, quivering form as they touched. Openly, he continued to stare as the man returned to his senses from his fit and stared back, skin feverishly hot, but with eyes so clear and unclouded for miles in his gaze. Warm, but so, so very cold. So unreal, horrible to look upon as he was too flawless, just so empty and painted-on despite an obvious burn scar running across his right eye and down his cheek. Law knew that scar. Knew that skin, those lips, eyes, cheeks, hair -- ah, underneath the clotted earth and dust, that must have been silk. Humans were never this perfect, but....

Frayed strings, they were strewn across the floor, lying underfoot. They wound everywhere, tangled around limbs while others knotted and piled like some rotted-away rope bondage. Or a little like a marionette. Delicately, he plucked one frayed end between his fingers and traced its path back to where it wound around a thin wrist and a gentle tug lifted it, awkwardly flopping a hand all puppet-like.

Interesting.

Letting the string fall back onto the filthy floor once again, Law straightened his posture, tranquility once again washing over him, his long black coat settling back neatly as though it hadn't the gall to ever let its wearer withstand an imperfection, its color absorbing all light from the fire that spat angry cinders from its hovel, clearly not so impressed.

But that wasn't his intent, anyway. Not as such.

With one hand gesturing outward over the man's body, Law paused and heaved energy throughout his body, the power of healing, warm and dripping through the latticework of his veins and down, down, down through his fingertips in rings of burning blue-purple light. It wasn't quite his area of expertise; healing, yes, but not in a generalization to simply 'heal' so much as amputating out the ill, sometimes replacing it with the healthy, if need be. It didn't hurt to try and the power was his own to spare. Even death wasn't so far beyond his reach, however caused more than cured, five letters etched twice over ten fingers as tattoos -- **D E A T H** \-- and this one looked to be quite well on its way. Not then, but eventually. Because everything dies.

The man watched him curiously, winced as the power touched him, violated itself through him and wormed through his eyes and ears and guts and toes, twinkling stars going in and out of miniature lives. Supernovas, white dwarves, neutron stars and -- purple? blue? -- **Black** holes pulling all gravity to its breaking point in the cores and ins-and-outs of him. And when it was over, he _shivered_.

All of those strings were once again becoming whole. It was something, at least, even if it couldn't mean anything good. They turned on him like snakes striking with lightning-precision and bound his life as much as they did his body like some external cardiovascular system. All over, neck to ankle, intricately wound up in thick red patterns that twisted in some places into knots of sakura blossoms and braided rings about his fingers, delicate leaves up his arms beneath his coat-sleeves and criss-cross netting down his chest that disappeared beneath the only other clothing he wore -- a simple pair of pale blue jeans -- and out their bottoms to curl around his ankles. Bound him, tied him down, down, winding his body over and over by parallels of the knotted patterns decorating the other man's slender wrists. There was meaning in this, wasn't there? It felt familiar.

Once again, those blue eyes were staring, wide open this time, breathing steady.

Perhaps he'd done some good after all.  
Even if he'd just found himself completely fucked.

"What?" he finally spoke, "What did you just do to me?"

The other man writhed against the floor like an earthworm ripped from the ground until they were pressed side-to-side, face-to-face, but with a face not of an enemy, more like harmless little thing drying out on sunlit pavement. Yet, more divine than that, awe-inspiring in his nerve, the audacity of the Cheshire smile he gave, this creature with his disheveled golden blond curls and pale blue eyes that could be so ever-dark in their color, suddenly gleaming with the light of life. Of an immense intellect, commanding a presence like the sky itself could split apart at his will (and the sun come tumbling after). But not tonight... not tonight.

Law was rather beside himself. Anger. Thrall. Strange feeling, not-quite-anxiety, but unsettled still. He didn't care for being tricked.

"I do what you do," the man replied, his voice dry and parched but simple, and laughter somewhere in there but of the bitter variety, "But not do, when one wearies of the ephemerid descents of never-marrying, antimicrobial angels. Flit, flit. Can I be warmed by this enfolding, holding you down? Or will you continually stray outward until I am warmed by nothing?"

His heart thumped, a slip-shod remindment of feeling.

 _Palpitation_.  
Tension.  
Quivering in visceral memory.

(He speaks in abstracts).

"Sabo-ya... damn it, if you wanted to see me, you could have just called."

 _Sabo_.  
The vermilion dragon.  
The element of fire.  
The harbinger of fortune.

(The highest being on any given food chain).

Traveler.  
Savior.  
Madman.

(Lover).

A relic of a time long-lost when serpents ruled the seas and the skies and rode the clouds at their whim. When _Natsu no hi no ryuu_ was a name that heralded more in the land of the rising sun than ringing bells at shrines and twirling, dancing, paper-mache pantomimes of glory, praising the gifts of the dragon of summer's flame.

Had Law been any lesser man, the sound -- the _thought_ of that name alone might have torn his heart asunder. And even still, it held far too much power over him to be good. Buried memories wracked his skull and ran down his spine, shuddering through his skin like being flayed alive by years and years of longing for this young-looking old thing who had him all tied up on a dirty floor. And this was going to be entirely _his fault_. This wasn't what he'd meant to happen. Running. Forgetting. Regressing.

He knew now why he had been drawn here. It was a trap. Sabo's trap. But _why like this_? Everything with the dragon came as a riddle and the angel was only sometimes patient enough to look for his answers.

With some loss of will, Law reached across the floor, bound fingers touching Sabo's skin, frantically rubbing at smudges of soot and dirt and all that perfection as if he could find underneath a face that he thought he'd never forget, but regretfully, nearly had. After all, how many years had it been? Eighty? Give or take, with no photographs to remember his startlingly handsome face. Sabo simply shivered, but seemed to understand that something in Law was afraid of this, afraid to too-deeply look at him; nothing he could do here would satisfy his inner turmoil.

Even still, the dragon leaned into him with a gentler smile, nostrils flaring and prickling to draw in his scent as he spoke more lucidly, more prosaically. "Call you. You mean with a phone? I do have one. I can talk to my brothers anywhere and I don't understand how it works; its all quite mysterious, but clever. I missed you, Law. I even brought you primroses, but they died long ago while I waited here for you. It's fitting, isn't it?"

Sabo did always love flowers -- like all poetry, he was fascinated by the language of them ( _hana kotoba_ ) and their meanings. There were many days -- happy days -- long ago spent dragging Law at his side for walks in gardens worldwide, naming each one, telling their story, often in repeats. Such as as primroses, petals of soft heart-shapes and the deeper sentiment of them, _I can't live without you_.

"I've been busy. You know that I--"

"Angel blood and phoenix feathers," Sabo interrupted sharply, "Atonement mothered your child years ago; I know what you've accomplished already. I've met with Roronoa Zoro. He told me. I know, I know, Law. Your work is already complete, and yet you forgot your promise to me. To not move on without me. Festivals have come and gone, but you not with them." Coiling his wrist, he jerked back his arm, and pulled by the connections of the red cords that wove about them, Law could do nothing to stop himself from tumbling against him, onto him. "I'll fill your rooms with primroses. How many rooms do you own now? How many do you need before you begin to understand?"

But Law did understand. Or at least thought that he did. After years of sighting too many worthless moons and stars and empty constellations, the universe's refuse of rocks and gasses caught lamely in orbits, he should get it by now --

Words that would sound like pointless prose to anyone else were all facts. Histories. Intimations of people they knew, of things that had once been said. Calendar page variations fluttered by with the blink of an eye, and by the time he noticed the changing of the dates, time had long expired. So caught up in everything. Eighty years of vacillations.

And the thing that actually, truly mattered -- the rhyme and the reason -- had been pushed to the back of his mind.

He stretched out straight against the other man, all six foot two of him, only slightly taller than him in his elongated spine. Sabo was larger if he took on his dragon form, and Law's angelic wingspan probably more than made up for it if they were to ever compare, but that was neither here nor there and Law did well to hide his true form. A dusty white cravat brushed against his bare collarbone and rope fibers bit their teeth into his skin as he let himself be manipulated as a marionette. Let himself be adjusted, pieces sliding into place. Let their lips touch together. Let his decision be made for him.

 **I** t was too much after too long.

 **N** othing else could compare to this --  
**e** verything he'd been lacking -- awakening feelings he'd been missing,  
**e** ntropy inside of him giving way to vertigo-spun reminders of a warmth they'd once shared,  
**d** esires they'd once shared.

 **T** ethered together, string-to-string, mouth-to-mouth,  
**h** eartbeat-to-heartbeat,  
**i** t's what it felt like to be pulled by all of his invisible threads,  
**s** till, too much time had passed. Too much.

Much too much. Beneath the dirt and the grime and the remnants of a low-grade fever, Sabo always smelled like wildflowers, not sweet but clean and subtly piquant. Law knew the tingling taste of their stamens on his tongue.

"You are the only thing good I could ever see in this world," he softly admitted, pausing to let his teeth catch on a plush bottom lip for a moment -- a slight nip. "You've always blinded me."

( _And there was only light -- the curve of your smile and your every expression, the ferocity of your eyes in the way that you looked at me, and the way you speak in narrow metaphors and careful lines with a firestorm mind... but have never -- not ever -- once said that you loved me. Why?_ )

Reaching towards the hearth, Sabo grasped a hold of something propped beside its flickering light and pressed its cold length against his side, pressed it until he took it into his hands. His sword. Kikoku. The meaning wasn't lost on him -- the dragon had stolen it from him long ago and (even if he didn't like it) with good reason.

"Law... do what makes you happy," whispered a low tone of intermixed emotion before he turned his head away.

And then, quite suddenly, he was gone, and Law collapsed against the floor, unraveling, strings and all from their intricate weave of symbols. Frayed and broken once more, lifeless shadows on the uneven wooden slats and he was left wishing, wishing for nothing more than that fledgling, simple reciprocity.

But he made his own bed,

(he'd already fled)

so he should lay in it unfettered. Severed. _Ephemerid descents_.

But how it felt to suddenly not have hands pulling at him, dragging him along by all of his strings, was incredibly lonely.

 

\----

 

Sabo was a light in the darkness.

A light to the darkness, that's what he was, and had the stereotype of blond curls and baby-blues to go with it, contrasting against Law's yellow eyes and black hair that gleamed blue under the sun. Sabo wasn't quick to take offense or quick to give defense. Though wickedly formidable, what lay roaring under his skin, beneath the contours of lithe muscle, was a passionate inner-fire that wasn't violent in any sense, nor did it cause him to curse at everything the way that Law sometimes did when his buttons were pressed in the right order. About the only thing that could really get under the man's thick skin was his protectiveness over his two brothers, and even then, he mostly trusted them to look after themselves.

But when times were tough, when that protective streak reared its ugly head, no kind of God could save anyone's soul from the wrath of those flames.

Even despite that, Sabo didn't view the world through dim-colored specs as Law did -- as though it were a roller-coaster missing spaces from its track and spiraling towards a certain inevitable doom. Which made no sense to him, because that really was the way things were working out and the metaphor stuck rather well, he thought. While people were always screaming, exhilarated and scared, the planet was rotting out from underneath them and they were going to give not a single fuck about it, all vacuously caught up in themselves, until the moment that they were all free-falling down, uselessly praying as they went, until very, very suddenly dead... and the dead didn't care about much of anything.

In that, he liked the dead a great deal as he could often relate.

The planet was rotting out, and people were more upset when others didn't agree with their talking points or when their vanity in generous words was insulted by others taking genuine action.

Entire species faced extinction and human kind was too caught up in arguing nuances and semantics and what the fuck things meant when they were misused so often to death that the wrong definition became the correct one (literally, literally, literally -- a decades-old pet peeve of Law's, one of many). More interested in the intricacies of higher language than the defenseless who couldn't use it to speak up for themselves to express their pain to those who wore the print of their pelts just the same.

Children were starving (look at the top 1% -- look at them. _Look.. at.. them_ ), polar ice caps were melting (Law always did prefer warm climates), religious nut-jobs were cannibalizing, children slaughtering each other while fucked up on cocaine and gunpowder (holy motherfuck), and where does one even start with North Korea? (Well. At least they weren't cannibals. He hoped).

Yadda yadda, blah blah....

And one could sometimes wonder what kind of monster it took to come up with the relative privation fallacy to justify themselves ignoring world problems, but it was probably the kind of asshole that was after Law's own heart.

First world problems were still a thing, regardless.

After all, the world -- first, second, and third -- was about to be thrown off its track no matter how anyone tried to change. It would be too little, too late. And when it fell, where it burned, all that self-centered, cynical narcissism would finally shut the (literal) fuck up. And he knew from experience, watching civilization immolate itself at the world's end, or what looked a lot like it, that saying 'i told you so' to a bunch of corpses didn't quite have the appeal that he'd once hoped for.

Sabo could attest to that; he'd been there as Law had laughed until his sides felt like they were going to split, both of them in tears, but never for the same reasons. And when Law finally noticed them, looked up to see them glimmering in those beautiful blue eyes, the moment hadn’t lost its mirth, but he at least tried a little to somewhat stifle it.

He hated people. Humans.  
Sabo loved them.  
And it was one of the reasons he loved Sabo.

"I am _not_ crying," Sabo insisted as the back of his wrist scrubbed at his face, jaw tightening, lower lip pursing out above the upper in an quivering, incensed pout.

"Right."

Because Sabo was his light in the dark.

Sabo reminded him that compassion was real.

And whenever he cried, though Law was always the one to pick up his broken pieces, it felt like he was the one being mended and comforted and made whole again, never the other way around.

It might have had something to do with the play of their shadows and the way they connected as they embraced under the light of day. So bright. They looked as one, climbing up along the ground. One perfect soul. One perfect time when the world ended and the sky was burning down around them... and though crying, Sabo would be ever as faultless -- scarred, yet flawless. Law's own lack of scars were yet more proof of the darkness blotting out his soul because he, unlike the dragon, had a penchant for picking away at his scabs rather than letting them heal. He couldn't help it; it was just the way that they itched.

They were salty.

Sabo's tears, that was, not scabs. Those were coppery.

"Let’s stop this now. Don't kill anymore, Law. Please. I’ll sing these words to you, if need be, in hopes of absolution."

Drip. Over eyes, over scars. Glimmer. Shine. Glisten. _Drip, drop, drip_.

He was addicted to them, kissing at them, warming his mouth and throat and belly and soul. He was addicted to watching them fall, feeling the other man's fingers splay and curl into his skin, seeking his comfort. Addicted to drinking up the saline across the red scar-tissue of his right eye and following their trail down his cheek, down his throat, letting the thrum of his heartbeat ride the tip of his tongue. Addicted to everything. Addicted to emotions he didn't otherwise feel. To the whole of him, all of his parts, pressed warm against him and caring for him, and only something in him could understand --

"I won't. I promise, Sabo-ya."

\-- nothing, not even the sun shining down on the first world war, could feel this hot and light.

 

\-----

 

Sabo was the one who had found him.

Brought him out of the darkness as no one else had before. As no one else had even tried.

And he forgave him for being a killer. A murderer.

As if he understood his reasons, even if he didn't agree with them.

But it had never been intentional on Law's part.

It was difficult to explain how it'd all started, though it was true what they say: men will forget their last, but never forget their first. Well, the first that actually matters, in any event, killing and sex alike -- just the same as Sabo had fucked the virginity clean out of him as his actual first, he had fucked the world as a whole over and over again with the same amount of zeal.

He had a type. A signature. A _modus operandi_. Always males between the age of 25-35, pale blond hair, blue eyes preferable, above average height and muscular in build. Always the same, always electrocuted before their hearts were cleanly cut with surgical precision from the body without damaging the ribcage or any surrounding tissue. Always, the organ placed into their hands and tucked against their stomach. Always, a careful, almost peaceful, reverent placement of their limbs, corpse turned onto its side as though asleep.

Modern criminal profilers might have thought of Trafalgar D. Water Law as the man of their psychologically analytical dreams. Or nightmares, case dependent.

(Who or what, exactly, did he see when he looked into the eyes of his victims?)

The first time he had taken a life, it had been in revenge for the death of another first -- his first love, juvenile and chaste -- but it didn't really matter what the purpose was so much as the end result. When he could recall every one of his firsts vividly -- the first kind embrace of a friend, the first feeling of a lover's sharp claws tearing his skin away avidly in red lines down his back as he gasped into his ear, the first twisted expression of a victim's death throes -- the second and third and fourth and the following thousands were lost to him, faceless and nameless victims one could liken to the vice of a cancerous, nicotine-stained way of living. He knew it wasn't good for him, but it was an addiction. And unlike cigarettes staining his hands yellow, his were always completely red.

Meanwhile, his pseudo-angelic wings turned from a pure white to a befitting black.

Unto the extent where the copulation between life's dissolve and death's prevail had become somewhat mechanical from his outside perspective that he deliberated what it might be like to experience it himself. The possibility of ascension intrigued him; he wasn't a true deity, but not at all human, either. And there was a strange disconnect in his mind from death and its permanence after a century or so of raining it down upon the masses. An existential dissonance.

And that was how Sabo had found him, long ago, bathed in his own blood. Disgusting. Pathetic.

The night that he'd cried for the first time in nearly one-hundred years.  
The night he realized that he didn’t want to die.

 

**March 31, 1895 - Tokyo-fu --**

_Harakiri_ worked well enough for other men, but not so much on him. Painful, certainly, and fascinating to him to know what it felt like from a less-impersonal perspective, but apparently even disembowelment wasn't enough to kill a _yokai_.

So he tried for his heart instead.

Laying on his back in a deep wooden basin inside an abandoned bathhouse, closed up and sealed tight so as to shut out the sun... just laying there, his own self-made darknothing, darknowhere, darkness, sucking it down inside with what was meant to be his last open-mouth gasp.

But he couldn't die.

This was immortality  
at its absolute worst.

Pinned with his own blade, kikoku, through his heart like a butterfly stuck to felt and put up on display. Sliced up fingers and palms, deep ribbons along the lengths of lifelines from grasping the long and sharp nodachi to thrust it into his chest; into the husk of himself that he'd laid out from a red-washed moisture as he waited for it to dry out, waited for death to happen. A death he deserved, if justice meant anything at all to him (it didn't). Long gone from the fresh color of a snowy and cold variety of purity, gone from youthful and celestial designs of what it meant to be an angel, or a clever photo-copy of one, in any event. The original _daitenshi_ would have been horrified, he thought, if he’d known how the white of him turned mottled, blackish dark, with bleach spots remaining on the edge of his flight-feathers when everything that he'd done and everything he had become awakened in his mind.

Yet he waited  
and he waited....

Day and night, night and day, time with all of its ins and outs passed by without anything to note of transitions between them while pain and madness all settled in. Made a home inside of him in the same way that small animals, little mammals, rodents and carrion and even cicadas eventually found a way to squirm through his innards and made clever little burrows inside to feed and nest their young. It was a sign that as much as he tried, life refused to shirk away from him and found its own way to thrive away from the lights and sounds of the outside world. Even as the years withered and faded from his recollections of them, blood poured ceaselessly from a heart that continued to beat on and on and on. Electricity looping through conduits in the aortic valve, never failing to send messages to the correct ventricles, pumping out a warm, polluted lake of gore that filled the basin, inch by inch.

And it was funny to him -- hilarious, even -- how he couldn't die but his skin could pickle and prune in a pool of his own blood. It was funny even as he forgot why he was even there, forgot all about his original experiment with death, as though this was the way that things had always been and this what his existence came down to -- all blood and an eventual bored disinterest with watching it spurt from his chest like the juice squeezed from an orange. Forgetting what had been and what could or would be, the wrongs of the past and those he'd likely commit in the future, lost in the slowly-slipping mind of a man who would have laughed aloud but could manage no more than a blood-slick gurgle. Smiling through unsleeping hours of insanity, a mess of copper-iron red flooding all orifices, a crippling inability to do anything about it, and a oneness with the dark that really didn't give a fuck anymore.

If there was a sense of something else, a sense outside his time spent trapped in that small world, it couldn't believe that light was more than merely a fever-dream. Beauty, love, kindness... no such things existed. No emotions, no senses. What it was like to lethargically nap under the sun on a warm, breezy summer day, basking in feel of heat on his bare skin and unfettered wings. The bitter, satisfying taste of fresh, hot black coffee scalding the back of his throat on a cool morning. A stray cat purring and looping about his ankle with a pleased twitch to its tail as his fingers scratched at the nape of its neck. Vague notions of joy remained intact, but he was lost on what it was about them that brought him feeling. Out of rhyme, out of reason, out of meaning.

He knew that somewhere, outside of the darkness, flowers bloomed and rose to meet the sunlight. Young, smiling women ensconced themselves with boldly patterned silks and pinned their hair in intricate ways, alluring handsome men to their sides. Music would play, the sound of plucked koto strings, sheltered within rich manors and garden pavilions, mingling with the hollow clomp of a bamboo fountain striking against a stone basin. All of these things carried on, mindless to the stench of decay some doors away but felt more like worlds. The bath of his arterial excrement, floating with the refuse of muscle tissue, sinew, slow coagulation, the pulmonary knack for embolisms.

Children played in the grass. Cries rose up from the streets in nationalist song and glory in a language he'd always loved, no matter how reprehensibly the words used, while the corrupt inspired then fed themselves from these congregations. Famine starved the outward-most reaches of the population while the men and women who stood on their backs complained of a hunger pangs for power that they could never quite fulfill. Ah, civilization. He didn't know this at the time, but this was Tokyo Prefecture, formerly Edo, in the year 28 of the lunar calendar during the Meiji Restoration, an industrious era. Eventually, given a few decades, the rest of the planet would be in the thick of the first World War while this place would remain mostly untouched. Not that it mattered. They'd make their mark eventually. Make history. Feel tragedy. Those always came and went as some nations rose, while others fell. Wars. Territorial pissings. Conflicts. Comings and goings. Children played on as they always did and eventually grew up to be adults that no one cared about, even as they died young for various causes but never actually made much of an impact individually in the grand scheme of things.

Everything dies. Everyone dies. No one actually remembers.

But somewhere out there in that great big world, a red dragon named Sabo liked to sit on rooftops amongst the gilded ornaments and watch all of this all take place with his legs kicked off the side, swinging them to and fro with booted feet, never properly able to blend in with the times nor the masses.

He could feel his presence pass by him from time to time. Ancient power, serpentine in nature, sliding over him like a shadow in a lightless room. But not a shadow at all -- a brightness shining its way into the dark, if only he would believe in it. _Keep faith, keep strong_ , it told him. The first thing that had in years. _I'm closer now, close to you_ , it said, and _you don't have to be alone_.

The eventual shape of the man that lifted him up out of that place was blinding and dazzling. Too bright, fire ripping through the gore-drenched room and turning it all to dust around him in a scorching blaze. Everything burned. Everything except him. When the nodachi was wrenched free from his chest and he was able to breathe in as though it were the first time, he could only manage to blink and squint, pupils struggling to unconstrict and remember what it meant to dilate. So weakened, he could only watch as his insides were rearranged back into their semi-rightful place, the folds of torn flesh were pressed together, and every wound of his was carefully, methodically, cauterized shut.

But he would not scar. He never did.

"My name is Sabo," the other man had said once he'd completed his work. A deep, yet kind voice, no malevolence to be found there. "That is the name that saved you from where you were born into captivity, yet you captivate me only by the frailest means. I wish for you a happiness that only you may truly name."

It wasn't a typical thing for anyone to say, but these were not typical circumstances. And what was happiness, really, anyway? A step out of line in his pattern of life. An emotion that was once a part of him that had long, long ago carried on and left him behind. Empty of feeling. Perhaps he'd forgotten how to have feelings at all. But if that were true, the thought of feeling any sort of happiness again would not have made him ache so, so much.

"Water," he managed to choke out after some time had passed, barely remembering what it meant to speak. But before he could manage to finish what he'd wanted to say, Sabo gathered him tight and secure in the strength of his arms, bridal style, and ran through the wide streets to the nearest running public faucet. It was nice, the splashing liquid cool on his face and in his throat, but in actuality, he'd been attempting to tell the other man his own name.

When Sabo asked him for it later, his reply was simpler than that -- Trafalgar Law sufficed, didn't it? It always had before. Names tended to be a little bit fickle when they were the correct one; something to do with power and true names; it was only momentarily that he'd forgotten its need-to-know basis. If he wanted to be named -- if he wanted to be named true -- if he'd wanted to be recognized for what he actually was, a hybrid angel gone towards the grotesque, he only need find a mirror.

But he favored looking to this light over the dark.  
Looking towards the fiercely smiling dragon.  
Glad to be alive, for once.

And if he'd known that it meant that someday he would have to hear endless poetry and all about the language of flowers too many times over, he would have been okay with that.

He let himself be clutched into a pale white embrace as the tattered remnants of his clothes were discarded and all of the dried blood was washed from his hair, skin, from underneath his fingernails, in his ears, his gums and teeth, but more importantly his nodachi, before he was carried off somewhere warmer and safer, too weak from years of the ataxia of laying perfectly still and inert to move on his own. He didn't know where he was anymore, but the stuffed mattress and quilt beneath him was heavenly soft, and the blanket laid over him was silk. He didn't complain as his hair was brushed and stroked with soft hands well through all hours of the night, establishing a careful familiarity between them. He let his broken spirit be soothed by a man with all of the traits of his previous victims. This had meaning. He let Sabo's warmth be the shoulder for his painful sobs, his body a safety net of his weakness, bringing his fingers and toes back from the numb and his mind back to some semblance of sanity.

"I've done too many terrible things," he admitted as his hands desperately curled at the other man wherever they could find purchase. The bridge of his nose collided with the underside of a jaw as he attempted to pull himself up, nuzzling there, taking shelter in Sabo's throat. "Evil things. I don't know how to die, but I shouldn't be allowed to live."

He'd never thought so before. What made that moment so suddenly different?

It was late at night, almost morning, and probably Spring outside the room Sabo had placed him in. Flowers were still closed in on themselves, hiding away from the eerie light of the moon hanging high up in the sky, useless symbology as he'd always thought it was.

Law felt more than he could see the other man smile.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean. But you're very pretty. Like a crying baby." Sabo's head dipped, pressing a reassuring kiss to his temple. "That is what matters. You've taken your first breath and it is clean, as it is kept beneath the crocodile's second lids, and you can't feel the smog that will eventually be the air. If you cry, I will rock you, move you, move you -- you're the curiosity of life."

 _Pushpulloverunder_ , move you, into you -- like nothing else, _like no one else_....

Off guard, Law could think of no way to reply, unsure how, really, when he scarcely knew what to make the other man. Poignant, but strange with his way of speaking. And a tad erotic for a man who had literally had his hands full with his intestines only hours ago. But on the other hand... on the other hand, depending on how one looked at it, there was also nothing else he could think of more intimate than that. There was no reason to feel so demure. Or ashamed. Not in front of a man who'd seen all of him. And not before something -- someone -- as eternal and regal as a dragon, no. They couldn't fall as angels did. Like Law. Like tears. Drip, drop, drip, fighting for that right thing to say, but could only sniff, shoulders shaking.

"Entanglement, too soon to breed, too deep to copulate," Sabo murmured sadly in the wake of his silence, fingers idly skimming his naked back. "You are empty; to the brink of extinction and made whole by my half. What is it that might behoove you to tangle as you do?"

Learning how to translate him was a thing that was going to take time and patience, but so long as Law was allowed to stay, time was a currency they certainly had without limitation.

"You smell like sweet almond verbena, Trafalgar Law.... I don't know your meanings, I only know that moves me so...." And from there, he drifted, settled down more comfortably with Law tucked against him and let his touch be his lullaby.

They slept for days, needlessly. It didn't take long for Law's strength to return to him, but there seemed little point to fully waking when lazing felt so good. Dreamless, careful sleep, and mornings came and went in their usual way, sifting hazy shadows through the bamboo supports of mulberry paper windows. Sabo too, as a long, drifting silhouette, but he always quickly returned. Sometimes the other man would drink bitter powder tea, sitting by his side like a watch dog. Sometimes he'd bathe his skin with a cool, wet cloth and rub ointment into his burns to lessen the pain. Sometimes he kissed his face, kissed his eyelids, his brows, his cheeks....

Sometimes he slid back the _shoji_ and they'd watch together as the cherry blossoms began to fall with a slight, chill breeze carrying petals into the room from off the whitish-pink dusted streets. Sometimes feeling himself as meager as a tiny petal that swayed from its branch in a matter of days rather than a matter of eternities.

Sometimes Sabo spoke.

"By the way, that sword of yours, lovely as it is, couldn't kill neither you nor me in its current state. You focus your energy, and then you strike. That is how we die. But so long as I get my way -- and I always do, by the way -- you will never be as transient as sakura. You will stay beautiful, living a very long life."

Sometimes it made actual sense.

But he'd catch on quickly from there that Sabo was not immune to time and the madness that came from it, speaking typically with the tongue of a stark-raving, stark-illogical dementia or some sort of psychosis... dragon psychology had never been a field of study to anyone, had it? But as he listened to him speak more and more, he realized that he was actually still entirely lucid in his mind. A mind with senses as razor-sharp as dragon teeth, and as wise as every single one of his countless years.

Only the words themselves were fragmented. And memories, those also went hazy at times.

Sabo's words and actions were made up of poetry. Abstracts. Prose. Lyrics. Most, but not all of them, and some less than others were open to more than one interpretation. There were a lot of repeats in place, more as though he had invented a language through his own sense of idioms or drawn from the hundreds of languages he'd cycled through in time.

Sometimes Law wondered if there were just too many things to say in too many ways from all he had heard and seen over its course -- too much to convey all at once, too many years spent trapped in his head without using his mouth to communicate. Sometimes he wondered if it were more like a disused muscle, that whatever it was that typically translated what his thoughts portrayed had weakened considerably over time, and was left unable to give the easy explanations of what went on his head. Sometimes he wondered that maybe the connection to the process had gone wrong, like a burnt out fuse, or all badly wired. Or perhaps Sabo merely found that metaphors moved so much more quickly, albeit imprecisely, but it was all he could manage without lapsing into pure dissonance.

Whatever it was, he did it without realizing that anything was at all different about the way he spoke

And after a while, it was easier and easier to understand.  
When Sabo was simply asking him if he felt okay.  
But more often softly telling him how he'd like to _move_ him.

And when he said _moving_ , what he actually meant always had to do with _fucking_.

\-----

 

There were other times when Sabo behaved completely normal -- or relative to what was statistically normal and he could laugh at himself and the things he confused on a regular basis. As time moved forward, he could express more and more of who and what he was than on previous days, and whenever he relapsed back into the thick of nonsense and prose, Law thought that it was probably for the better. That time ticking away in foreign stares and incomprehensible babble kept enough of him back that Sabo didn't become the mainframe of his being. Didn't turn him into a teeth-chattering, shaking little creature underneath the wake of the blinding light that he gave off. Didn't always have to consume him, only sometimes, but never entirely.

Only when he thought too much on it -- then, he could find himself utterly arrested by the mere notion that such a powerful man was contented merely by laying beside him, speaking to him, focusing his attention upon him so wholly. And he'd forget that he himself was probably someone special, too.

 

**September 30, 1905 - Yugawara-machi, Kanagawa --**

"When I was younger, I used to think that I could use my power to change the world," Sabo softly spoke into the quiet as he and Law sprawled together across the edge of indecency and abeyance, drunk on thoughts and words and curiosity cast in voices and eyes alike raised towards a darkened ceiling. The night -- or morning, depending on perspective -- was thick and black in the early A.M. hours and though the candlelight had long since died away, Law's sinuses were still stuck with their pungent wax scent along with the flowery incense hazy in the air. Heady and aromatic, mystifying his mind with fragrance alone, like a youth held in thrall by opiates and a simple light navigating a blurry path of shadows across a wall.

"Do good, right? But then as time passed, I began to realize--" He knew that Sabo's head had turned to face him, so close was he that Law could feel the stirrings of the air as blond locks tumbled across the tatami that they, two, lay upon. He could hear it. He could envision it in his mind, the motion. " -- how important it could mean to reach but one person."

Sabo found Law's silent deliberation to be of comfort, and he conveyed this in the most gentle of ways as their fingertips brushed together as they had so many times before, as witnessed by both candlelight and the dark face of the new moon. The tip of his index finger lightly caressed from the back of a hand, over the Roman aqueducts of his veins and down to the nail of his thumb -- such a simple and tiny gesture becoming so large of a thing -- something more than any deeper contact in the way that it made Law's chest feel heavy and constricted with special meaning. His hand coiled about a smaller, daintier one and laced them together. Bound. Binding. The world spun and collapsed upon itself, yet all surrounding him was inert -- he was quite sober, yet drunken and lethargic by presence alone.

Blindly, he was dazzled.

"A person such as myself, you mean? -- To what end? What purpose does that serve?"

"None whatsoever." Sabo's voice came upon his tactile senses like velvet rubbing against his skin, heated by a soft exhalation of breath. "I'm satisfied by being self-indulgent, though you may assume whatever you like. I don't mind.”

It was then Law's turn his head aside, feeling his cheek sink into the worn, thick mat covering the floor of their rented room in a comfortable ryokan; upon learning that Law had never visited an onsen before, Sabo had insisted this be remedied by visiting as many as possible with little to no regard given to what it did to their power. Despite a significant racial difference, serpent and avian, fire and lightning, a draining effect brought on by standing water was mutual. And though his skin had long-since cooled from hours spent soaking in hot springs until dizzy from the heat, the relaxation lingered bone-deep.

He focused all of his energies on attempting to discern the older (yet definitely younger somehow, and infinitely more fragile) man's face in the darkness. To see that of a powerful dragon or angel or demon there, not one of a tender young male. He wished to find the smile or frown that didn't quite touch the neutrality in the shiver of his voice or the shortness of his breath, sweeping close and humid and warm against his lips with the most unbearable gap that separated them from touching together. Just a tilt, his mind spoke, and it might have almost been an accident of the moment, but he knew that the timing was all wrong. He understood enough of Sabo to know that he would never allow a kiss until the moment was both awe-inspiring and breath-taking, poetic, else it be spoiled by being too mundane. Ten years had gone by living mostly on actions, fled of words that possessed any amount of sense.

"Assumptions can be dangerous, you know," he whispered, "I don't want to make the wrong ones."

"I'm aware of this..."

Law realized that in the current of Sabo's small exhalations of breath drifting across his skin that he was the one surreptitiously poised to lean in for a kiss, not himself. Yet, he was waiting -- waiting, perhaps, for Law to merely say the right thing at the right time to make it the right course of action.

"But what if I choose to assume that you don't love me at all? What if I assume this has only ever been a game? Or that I've been misinterpreting you all along? If you allowed me to believe that, then it would de-elevate you in my mind to my level. I would think a lot less of you."

That was definitely not it.

"If thinking something that stupid is what you'd like to do, then I won't argue." The other man sat up, the outline of his body losing its cohesion in the dark, "The evidence to the contrary is all around you. Still, I'd have to ask why it is that any emotion I may or may not possess towards you would bring me down -- make you think worse of me than better of yourself."

"Can't I do both? I can be better, and you can be worse. Anyway, I was only speaking hypothetically. I should be able to do that. You of all people know better than to take words by their face value." A hand waved into the dark until it found Sabo there, and tugged him back by twined fingers and down again onto the tatami. He placed his lips to the backs of curled knuckles, soothing and placating the man to take comfort once more at his side.

"But to be honest, I know how you feel," he continued, "I remember what it was like after I was 'made'... having so much sudden ability and feeling like I was supposed to do something magnanimous with it. Sometimes, I still do struggle with that."

But all he had known was death, and death was the only thing he had wrought... until shown something otherwise. A better way, however modest and inelaborate.

"Some might say that you did. Some might say that existing is enough. My name is already sung and praised, and you thread to me, filament by filament, rings on my fingers and chains around my neck, perfect circles stabbed needle in, needle out--"

"Sabo-ya, stay with me," he murmured, amused, "Think simply, else you begin to drift."

The other man laughed quietly, eyes sparkling at him in the dark with soft blue shimmerings. "I am well over a millennia in age. I can't be expected to be simple about everything."

"You're also egotistical, megalomaniac, senile, and look and behave like a teenager -- I'm going to tease you for at least one of those things, so pick your poison," Law replied, though it didn't actually matter. Sabo would always choose the poison itself, and they both knew that, because he could be very predictable at times, and if there was such a thing as an 'other' in any given multiple choice question, he would probably take it.

But if there were truly a one and only constant between them, it was that Sabo would select 'all of the above' when it came to his reasons for being with Law no matter what the answers were -- a constant that he would choose him for every moment of all of his vast history of experiences, from a time beginning long before his birth and its ending that would come long after his death, but more poignantly at the latter.

And then there would be no room for any assumptions at all. No questions, no multiple choices, and no mistake as to who Law belonged, who it was that bathed him in light. Made him sane. Made him feel real. Made him feel whole.

Sabo made him  
everything.  
_Alive_.

"You're the butterfly out from a chrysalis," the dragon answered, taking Law by surprise (not the poison then, after all) as his blue eyes lilted as though growing too weary to carry on conversing. Attention span wavering, hands drawn to cover Law's eyes in the dark by way of something he couldn't actually understand. "I mean flowers. I'm sorry. Meanings... I mean that I want to explore you as you grow. You..." he huffed in frustration, "You, we... we do. From... Whatever else you want to make of it all... the trivial." And his voice broke into a soft sound of alarm, expression crumpling, fingers skittering to cup the sides of Law's face with the struggle of making the words come out just right, as if what he had to say was too important to be lost into the chaotic stumbling of his beautiful, crowded mind.

"I understand you. It's all right--"

It really was. It was only three words, but somehow, Sabo could never bring himself to say them.

He leaned in to kiss gently at his blond hair, and deeming the moment the correct one for it, let his breath be stolen away as he lowered further to take his lips.

Actions were so much easier to interpret.

"-- I'll be with you forever, also, no matter what, Sabo-ya."

Idly, Sabo's fingers brushed at the nape of his neck before slipping down, picking at away at his clothing as though it were a casual, completely usual and normal thing to do, much the same way that he might help straighten the lines of his clothing as he dressed in the morning. As though it were something that simply needed fixing -- just that slightest bit of adjusting.

His sash came apart in a soft whisper of cloth against cloth and his summer yukata was spread open, and his skin was given generous exploration as Sabo began to tell him a story -- _their story_ \-- throughout gestures caught between romantic and indecent. Touching his throat, collarbones, the dip of his sternum, and teasing at a pink nipple with the slightest bite of a fingernail....

"I remember that first night in Tokyo. You were as childlike as stars, back then... older, still, more stunning than before. Beyond birthdays that come and go like names and faces, thumbing through the pages of endless youth."

 _Nnn..._ Law moaned simply, adoringly, stomach quivering as the other man's index finger trailed down beneath his navel and deviated along the v-shape shadow of his hips. " _Sabo-ya_...."

Blood heating up, thoughts distorted on the fine-line between dragon and _yokai_ , diversified and all lust-drunk, Law gave a sensual roll of his hips to press the abundant prize that Sabo claimed firmly as he delved his hand lower. Pushing aside the folds of the fundoshi he wore, palm pressuring against the shape of his cock, conforming around it, beginning to stroke him languidly as he continued to speak on--

"There was so much I'd wanted to convey, and your hands were so pale and statuesque. And the secrets they withheld, in time, we drank together off of a village water fountain. There was so much to drink, but so few hours of the night."

The other man yanked the white strip away entirely, kind enough to get straight to the point as it unraveled free from smooth, curving hips that assisted in lifting for it to be pulled away. When and where he could, Law mouthed gratuitously at Sabo's throat, nibbling and nipping and leaving a glistening trail of saliva in his wake as he worked down his collar. Inhaling his scent, wildflowers and whatever it was dragons were made of -- scales, he supposed -- or a snakeskin he only shed in the metaphorical sense, and whatever cologne oil it was that he liked to wear mixing with a faint tinge of common male sweat.

It was thick in his senses, settling there as his hips rocked fluidly against Sabo's grip, breath going shallow as he felt lips and teeth and tongue slide down to trace the lines of his heart-shape tattoos before he found himself pushed onto his back. Settling between his thighs, the dragon's hands lifted his body and it moved with him accordingly. Fingers tangled through blond hair before splaying down and down and down his spine, vertebrae to vertebrae, _bump bump bump_. Coming to a rest at where the other man's ass had a tendency to dimple adorably beneath his kimono.

His neck tilted his head back to direct his gaze towards the cracked fissures of the ceiling -- little spots there in the wooden slats like dark stars that twinkled in silent mirth, sing-songing at the way Law faltered every time beneath the power of the dragon's insatiable appetite. Even if he'd wanted to, he couldn't reply in any way or interject into Sabo's poetry -- words stolen with the remains of a quickened breath, lips cracked with a groan loosed to the only visible barrier between a quasi-angel and its home up in heaven.

"I studied your eyes in feigned deliberations, dialogues between indecision and conclusion -- half sour, half sweet, beneath the guise of self-assurance, twitching hidden nervous gestures. I'd seen too much, for too long, to be so coy," Sabo murmured before licking at his fingers -- it was probably not the best idea; they had soft paraffin somewhere in their meager belongings, but after years and months of nothing more than the clothes on their backs in their possession and the night sky serving as the roof over their heads, there had only been spit slicking the way between them and this had become purely habitual. Too dry, though. Sometimes painful. But never bad. Law had to admit that it was nice, in a way, the burning, the stretching, the dull aches of being filled to the brink -- he liked to feel it long after Sabo was finished with him, remnants of cum leaking out his ass when he sat up, dripping over the inners of his thighs. It reminded him of what they were in these dark hours, what they represented, what he had been reduced to, and where he had always belonged. It reminded him--

 _You_ are beautiful.  
_You_ are beloved.  
_You_ are bright.  
_You_ are necessary.  
_You_ are wanted.  
_You_ are needed.

 _You_ are, above all things, Sabo's **mate**.  
And _you_ are always bound to him.

Completely.  
Completely.  
Completely.  
( _You complete me_ ).

 _You_ can't run from this. _You_ can't hide. Where he pulls, the threads that bind your fate will always drag _you_ with him.

Breathless, gasping, whimpering when a slick finger pushed inside, he pushed right back while pawing hands urged the other man to divest of his clothing. And when they went loose and were discarded in the dark as he was stretched open, naked bodies wrapped around each other tightly, sweat-damp senses overloading and stuttering out--

"A month passes by in the space of a few seconds. The 30th of every month turns its page to the 1st, and the sun rises just as I wish it never would. I didn't need you back then as much as I'd let on..." Teeth grazed over the shell of Law's ear, mouth touching hotly down his jaw as the weight of his body pinned the _yokai_ to the floor as he met Law's yellow gaze with own, sparkling blue.

Under that weight, Law gave up, gave it all up, eyes shutting tight and squeezing, thighs opening and tensing, dragging Sabo in and in and in between. No one and nothing could fill him the way Sabo did, feeling the insides of his ass conform to the shape of his thick cock. Movements gratifying yet never quite enough; pleasurable and painful and intense; touches, thrusts, drops of kisses placed whenever and wherever he could.

( _push pull give take I will move you like no one else_ )

"... Do you still hear me, lover? Are you still listening?" Sabo moaned as much as he questioned while his body rocked gently, weight propped near Law's shoulders by the heels of his palms as he slid in and out, moving _moving_....

"I would burn the entire world for you, nonetheless."


	2. Chapter 2

Sabo was a light in the darkness.

But there had been a time when all that Law could do was hide his eyes and run from it -- from his salacious affections, from his poetry, from the pretty words of flowers and beauty and finer things in life, and the sometimes strange things that he posited from his thousands of years of existing. It had been some instinct within him, the running. Raw and quivering, frightened from years of battle-weary conditioning from all of his inner demons -- run and run and never look back.

He'd fought them tooth and nail, but they were many and he was one. No claws, no sharp and gleaming canines, only artificial angel wings bestowed upon him by the one and only kind benevolence previously shown to him in an otherwise cold and discompassionate world.

A world he hoped would end soon.

His name had been Rosinante. It was a pretty name, wasn't it? Befitting. And when he was known as the heavenly angel Corazon, it had suit him as well, because he was truly at the _heart_ of everything. An influence to every action that Law took, symbolized by the shapes of the tattoos on his chest and biceps. Inspired him to try and be more courageous, a little kind, sometimes paying it forward without even realizing it.

Sabo was a lot like him, in some ways, and not only by the color of their blond waves of hair, but also their sense of abstracts. Their light was so similar, however much Corazon had tried to disguise his as yet another variation of dark....

And how he had a tendency to light himself on fire.  
How Sabo had a tendency to light _everything else_ on fire.  
How _I love you_ had been a part of Corazon's dying words.  
They would someday probably become Law's too.

But he was also the inspiration behind his fears, his own darkness, his own terror. But not by any fault of Corazon's own. The road to hell was truly paved with good intentions, and his had been the best of them. This was a legacy that Law had carried on with him... but only the hell part, not the intentions. He seldom actually had those, be they good or bad.

When Law was a child, he watched everything he'd ever known crumble and die around him. And before he met the same fate, a kind, intervening hand caught him before the undertow of sickness and pain sucked him under and brought him up into something greater, larger than life. Love and immortality were words that intertwined synonymous with one another. Until Corazon was murdered by his own brother while Law watched, helpless, powerful yet powerless, catalyzing a spree of death that lasted nearly a century.

_Who or what, exactly, did he see when he looked into the eyes of his victims?_

Not Corazon. Not _Cora-san_. Never him. But someone who resembled him by blood.

But Law had changed. There had been a light in his world. All long before the dragon of blond hair and sky blue eyes bound him up in ropes in an abandoned cabin somewhere in a lone northern peninsula, long before they'd made a life together, and long before Sabo could form a pattern of words that conveyed lucid thought outside of his abstracts, there was only this:

 _Do not kill anymore, Law. Please_.

Rule number one between them, he supposed... and he had broken it in the worst way.

 

**August 31, 1915 - Kozukumi-jima, Mie-ken --**

He was sitting in the sand upon the shores of an uninhabited island off the coast of Honshu. For several years, Law had taken up roost there in an abandoned, dilapidated shrine, some small getaway from menial things and menial thoughts, conflicts of his feelings, resentment towards humanity... just away, away from it all... petty arguments, first world problems before such a thing as a first world existed. Though nearby Japan and coastal China closely resembled them, even before an age of vast technological advancement. Trains were all the rage and automobiles were relatively new, not so much choking the air with the smog that Sabo had predicted about twenty years ago from that time.

Off in the distance and just above the dark horizon, there were red and blue fire lights watching him in the form of two other variety of _yokai_ who had played witness to what had transpired that night. Earlier, there had been innumerable, lesser little spirits, _kodama_ , but now only the two larger powers remained. But they did not care to approach him, only playing silent sentinels, shining their colors in the sky in eulogy for a lost friend. And for that, they had his respect, however little it was worth.

He sat for some time, waiting there for his judgment. Not from a fire light, but from a fire dragon called down by way of summoning spell only he could use -- a means to contact each other during the times they parted ways, should something important arise (or should he feel a touch of loneliness). He had reasons for the crime he had committed, but really, there were no excuses that could stand up to what Sabo beheld as he alighted upon the beach.

Crocodile eyes would have been a nice thing to have -- to shut himself back from that exact moment with two sets of lids blinking both sideways and downwards. Just so as not to see the look in Sabo's own just before his tears began to fall, as addicting as they were in how much Law wanted to touch them, taste their sparkle. Test if they would glimmer as sweetly on his tongue as they did the pallor of his skin.

But not look at them. Not when he was the cause of them.

No.

What Sabo saw, cradled in Law's arms, was the small, lifeless husk of a dead dragon in its human form. Patches of yellow scales shined like golden armor across his forearms, bare thighs, calves, all still wet from the ocean waters. So much strength and power, made _so small_ by his own, so tiny, so small small small...

He looked like Sabo... so very much, and also like Corazon with soft blond hair matted with sea-salt against his relaxed brow and deep blue eyes -- not the color of the sky, but those of a fish, cold and dead and forever unfeeling. He should probably close them. Do something. Turn back time. Undo this mistake. In the past, Law had only ever killed humans, and unlike them, dragons, especially this one, this kind, the altruistic and noble creatures who kept to the kingdoms deep under the sea, they were utterly, exquisitely pure and faultless.

"Law... what have you done?" Sabo asked in a near-whisper, maintaining his distance across the sand, horrified. "What the _fuck_ did you do?"

"He asked me... begged." How could he ever excuse this? How could he even think of a way to explain himself for this large of a transgression? "His mate was in a territorial skirmish and was fatally wounded. Somehow, they knew I was here, and knew that I had healing abilities and swam a long way to get here. But it was too late. The other one had died before they even arrived and -- he's a little bit further up the shore, now, alive. And he's doing fine." Not that it made a real difference. "....I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't have. It wasn't my place, especially with your kind, but I couldn't watch him like that. He reminded me of myself too much... I knew what he was feeling because I've been there before and I barely survived it. For a moment, it felt like the right thing to do, take out his life and breathe it back into his lover...."

That was the furthest extent of his power. But it was forbidden. The one thing he should never do. Another rule number one; not between himself and Sabo, but his personal set of responsibilities.

Do not **ever** try to play God.  
Tread carefully.

But in this instance, and just for that instant... it was all he could think to do. From the moment that he had felt the water dragon slide up on his shore, an aura of despair and horror took to the island like a sickly fog that wrenched deep into his guts and threatened to pull them inside out. A feeling that had him running outside and onto the beach with his nodachi in his grip, just as a stunning, golden-scaled sea serpent slid into a human shape and gathered himself up onto two legs that shook too much to hold his weight. Like a newborn fawn, still unlearned in its ability to stand, he then collapsed back onto the sand above the body of his dead lover. On his knees, he looked up towards Law with a face both tragic and hauntingly beautiful, streaming eyes shifting between white and blue with the foaming crests of the ocean, soft drifts of currents, not unlike like Sabo's that could burn and flicker with cerulean flame by way of his own element.

For moments, the dragon had looked at Law, simply looked at him with so much grief in his gaze before it dropped down as his head lowered with the rest of him, prostrate, pathetic, kowtowing to a dark _yokai_ who could have just as easily killed him for his insolent trespass onto his territory. Pleading to Law in a language meant for the sea and not for the land, yet the voice of his thoughts came across clear --

He loved. He loved and he lost. His name was Sanji and he needed Law's help. _I know what you are and what you can do. Please. Save Zoro. Anything, I'll do anything, please. **Please**_.

In the aftermath of this, this reason felt flimsy and weak, even if it was the truth. And this was reflected in the way that Sabo's fists curled against his sides, hands bunching together in the shapes of three claws rather than five fingers. Whatever happened to Law now, whatever punishment was about to befall him... wouldn't come just yet. Not before he could do something to make this right. Sabo sighed out deeply through his nose, inhaling through his mouth, back out -- breathe, calming, centering -- the ebb and flow of the ocean rolling onto the shore.

"If that is so, then look down into the secret underwater passage way, it opens quite easily behind the third kelp in the first row. A society is secreted there with passwords and proverbs and reprises, and sieves quieted in quagmires, clandestine hush-words," he said all-too calmly, as though a storm were about to break loose and it was all he could do to hold back the deluge, "Quietly, the fishes said this to me as I hid in the shadows, though I'd never come to reveal or identify: 'there is fire in these halls; the color of your blood, of your heart', but not exactly in those words, not quite. There is a secret in these false lines, and the answer lay hidden in-between them."

"What is that even supposed to _mean_? Do you even know how exhausting you can be sometimes?" Law spat impatiently, turning on Sabo as though he hadn't been the one to call out to him for help. As though it hadn't been his anguished, hurried scrawls of blood in the sand that summoned him there in the first place with his spell. As if it had been his intention all along to verbally lash out at the other man just as he physically had the sea dragon's life, diverging from the crux of their actual problems from out of his darkness and shoving it into Sabo's light, as if he meant to pervert that brightness in some way. He'd never once specifically addressed Sabo's idiosyncrasies before; he knew that it would hurt him, and yet... "Why are you always like this? Why can't you... just be fucking normal for once, Sabo-ya, and fucking _help_ me? -- this is already hard enough without you making everything so complex. If you have some secret you're hiding about your kind, something I can do to make this better in some way, just say it outright already. I am getting so sick of your demented, senile ramblings, I almost can't stand listening to you anymore."

Sabo's reaction was knee-jerk and violent, dredged up and forcing his hand with a powerful and unmitigated fury that howled about them in a sudden, deafening gale. The sky, the sand, and the water, they all burned a fiery red. A show of authority, a show of power, aggrandized by feet and hands burgeoning forth as large claws, and muscles and body writhing and twisting into roaring, skin-searing flames.

"You are all dry, all insolent pens, all inkless feathers," a forked-tongue hissed, "How I will burn you up."

Claws curling and raising, meaning to strike down an already fallen angel in a blow that would have sent him spiraling to an immediate death to join the other dragon, Law found himself curling about that lifeless form, as if to protect the pale and empty shell of him. It was instinctual, in a way. Not knowing how or why, but only knew that it was necessary. And as the thought was already there and likely his last, he had to make it count.

Because if there was anything at all that could be done -- because surely, if it were in his power to transfer life from one being to another, then the same process could be repeated again -- he had to protect it, even if at the expense of his own life.

It was all he had to give, really.

And if Sabo were the one to take it, that would be the most poetic exchange between them yet.

Considering all that he had been and all that he had done, long before he and the vermilion dragon had even met, the thousands of lives he'd massacred that could never satisfy the revenge of Corazon's death, it was the very least he could do.

And maybe it was for this reason that, before powerful claws could land and puncture into the back of his skull and burst it open onto the beach, Sabo recoiled against himself, stumbled back, looking for all intents and purposes as broken as Law himself felt.

"I don't want to hurt you... I don't.... what am I doing?" the blond muttered to himself, red dragon tail crested with blue and gold whipping and curling about restlessly. "I'd want to die without you, too, just like the fish-dragon. I can't hate you. I can't hurt you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

( _Don't tell me that you're sorry, Sabo-ya... just tell me for once that you love me_ ).

A reptilian face and vertical-slit pupils rimmed in blue iris, stained pink and bloodshot in the sclera, stared up at him, startling in their clarity, however inhuman. "I'm sorry. Law. It's the spell. Yours... before, Law. Yours..." he shook his head and looked to the sand, the grains of sediment washed up from the ocean floor, skeletons of long-lost kingdoms. "Law. Law, angel. _Listen carefully to me, Law_ : a spell that is written in mind, not in books, and perfected under candle-lit bright... fire/water/earth is the breath of the sea wall, hushed and hidden away. Forgive me of the heart colors that I wish to dye, ribbon-mark, and the ache and tremble of a secret I never wished to speak." Sabo's body was visibly shaking as his flames smoldered, took human form to kneel in the sand to draw letters, and then gestured over them with arms spread wide --

**C O R A Z O N**

\-- and a gaze that pleaded to him, dripped wet with so many angry and upset tears, begging for Law to try to understand... and he did. He did. "This, the secret made by a man of hearts, and my beloved angel in its shape."

If Law was reading into this correctly, it meant that Sabo knew something of how Corazon had made him into a _yokai_. Or something vaguely like one; there was a different word for it entirely, but Sabo liked the word 'angel' and that was what had stuck over the years. The man had always wrinkled his nose in distaste even when the word 'yokai' alone came up in conversation, as though rejecting it completely in denial. Air spirit. Angel. If that was what he liked to call him, then so be it....

Still, at that long ago time, the human child that had been Trafalgar D. Water Law had not fully died, but was certainly close to it at that point, withering and fading away by a common plague that had wrecked entire civilizations by the masses during that era. If such a thing, such a spell could be done to a living human to the end result of his existence, the effect it might have on a dragon, perhaps with a spark or two of life (fire/water/earth... what about the air? What about hybrid spirits?). Law's mind spun with the very possibilities.

"You're certain?"

Sabo nodded once slowly, somberly.

"Thank you. And I'm sorry for yelling at you. I didn't mean it."

"You did. But it's okay. Where you pull, I will drag. You will move me... move me... do the right thing, Law, don't look into books, but into their passages, narrower paths... find me before you move on, then move me with you..."

 _Pushpullgivetake_ drag drag drag _move with you, move as you do_ , like nothing else could, like no one else could, because that's the way the threads that connected them worked. And some of Sabo's similes were easier to understand than others.

"Of course I will. I promise that I will," Law said, trying to smile as he gathered himself to his feet, however hollow the expression came. The soft, cold body in his arms was shifted over his left shoulder carefully, arm braceleted around him securely as he dusted the sand away from his clothes to the best of his ability while Sabo found and collected his nodachi from the ground.

From behind him, another voice spoke up -- "We can help, I think."

One of the fire lights that had been up in the sky stepped forward, an attractive young man wreathed in flame that crossed the distance between himself and Sabo before being pulled tightly, cheek-to-cheek, in a large bear hug with kikoku still in his grip. Even if Law didn't immediately recognize the man (they hadn't ever met, but he was fully aware of who he was by his description) with his tattoos and his dark hair and dark eyes, he still would not have been jealous. Truthfully, if Sabo were capable of bringing in other lovers, especially ones so young and virile, delicious, sleekly muscled, but so boyishly freckled and handsome -- he would have been very interested.

"Ace!"

That, however, was not the case. About Sabo having side-lovers, not his interest -- that was still intact. Maybe he had a thing for immortal boys who liked to play with fire. Maybe. He wouldn't put it past himself. As he turned his eyes away from the two brothers embracing each other and towards the other firelight that had stayed his distance... the one of blue flames. Ah, he could do a lot for a man like that. He could. The tousled blond hair (always blonds), perpetual bedroom eyes and lackadaisical yet graceful gait, and abdominals one could eat their fucking breakfast off of. Discovering ways to break and tame the lovely bird of fire would be the ride of his life, wouldn't it? And though it probably wasn't the most appropriate of thoughts he could have had for the moment, it almost couldn't really be helped and no one could have blamed him for it. The severity of the moment almost exacerbated this as The Phoenix, that creature, was always quite a sight, even if it wasn't reciprocal.

They'd passed each other by once or twice, but Marco the Phoenix had been quick to strafe from their paths ever truly crossing, and that aversion became part of his appeal. Because he could tell exactly what Law was, the taboo of his true form and what dark power it actually held... not of angels or air spirits. Not that of demons, nor that of a _yokai_... though as a blanket term, that was probably the closest... but all of the above. A bird's eye could see through his illusions and to what not even Sabo could see. Not only the electricity running through his veins, the power of telekinesis, and the ability to drain life (which had particular meaning for the blue fires of rebirth), but also black wings, kept shackled out of sync with reality, grotesque and opaque. And if Marco's instinct told him to steer clear, it was a good instinct to have.

Law only wished that the little sea dragon he held had shared it.

Gazing back at one another, Law was the first to lower his eyes and nod his head towards the Phoenix's regard, and after some moments passed, Marco did the same. 

"It's good to see you, Sabo... I wish this were a good time to catch up, but we're actually here for the other blond dragon." Ace withdrew and turned towards Law, then looked upon the tiny, broken body on his shoulder with a pained expression. "I also wish we could have met under better circumstances. Sanji was a friend of mine. But I don't blame you fully for what happened, Law. We--" being himself and Marco, "--We saw everything. He shouldn't have dragged you into this. I tried to stop him, but his mind was made up."

"I'm sorry for your loss, then, Hiken-ya."

"I'm going to go check on Zoro; I'll need to move him somewhere safer, yoi." Marco spoke up, "For our own sakes. I don't like dealing with upper level demons on a good day, let alone when they find out that their boyfriend has been murdered."

Harsh, but true.

"New information comes to me as thin as rushes." Sabo looked at Law incredulously, free hand gesturing in a universal show of frustration as he shouldered kikoku with the other. "For the sake of a demon, would you draw the chalk lines on a sidewalk and sing swan songs into the cup of your hands?"

"Hush now, I don't discriminate. And I don't know what that's supposed to mean. Most things think me worse than a demon." He could be upset about the dragon's possible implications another time, understanding that the situation was too upsetting and taking anything to heart right then would be disastrous. Dismissing it, he turned to Marco. "Either way, he's in perfect physical health, though he should be unconscious for quite a while. Good luck with him and thank you."

Marco kicked off the ground, the blue flames of his wings hovering for a moment, and he added just before taking flight, "I hear Russia is nice this time of year. Ace, have Sabo take you home for the night. I'll meet you there before sunrise, yoi."

Sabo frowned, watching as Marco sped off along the shore. "What?"

"Don't mind Marco. He gets… kinda iffy when he’s upset. And anyway, its not like there are any other dragons around that can make magical riding clouds..." Ace trailed as he looked between his brother and the _yokai_ holding the dragon's golden body. "Wait, how many other people can you carry, anyway?" Ace asked.

"Just one if they are light. However, the vestigial wings of an angel could carry the weight of the world upon its back, and the one I call mine is no exception. He is like the mayfly; the sky is not his limit," with saying this, Sabo's frown deepened all the more, eyes darkening midnight blue. They turned their gaze on Law, questioning, searching... and then lowered sadly. The dragon knew how he felt about this and that wasn't going to change any time soon.

Sabo could never so much as say with plain words what Law truly was beneath the generalizations, let alone ever actually look at it. Never, not once, had the other man seen Law in his true form... nor had he ever asked to. And Law couldn't help but wonder, was this why Sabo could never say that he loved him? Was it because he was a thing that simply could not be loved? It was possible. He'd never been able to bring himself to approach the topic, and he had not been alone in avoiding it; easily brushed aside with thoughts to the effect of 'what you are doesn't matter to him', but if that were true....

If that were true, there would be no reason to dodge the subject as they did -- just as Sabo was doing at that moment.

"The sky is all yours tonight, angel and _shiranui_ , upon almond verbena feathers. I am all lace wrapped up in myself. I need time to untangle alone, until the red paper dragon dances once more. And this--" he tapped Law's nodachi on his shoulder. "-- Is coming with me for now, Law, as insurance. You won't be needing it."

It was all Sabo had to say, not allowing either of the other two men to put a word in otherwise, not a protest nor a goodbye -- before he transformed into a burst of scales and flames and took off like a comet and its shimmer-trails falling in reverse into the night sky, leaving Law and Ace alone together on the shore.

An awkward silence reigned for moments until Ace finally broke it with, "Well, shit."

"Yeah, pretty much that," Law huffed, finding the sentiment rather apt. _His sword_. It was more to him than a mere weapon and Sabo knew that. But there wasn't much that could be done about it for the time being, and there were other matters that needed settling and couldn't be delayed. "So, Hiken no Ace-ya, I hope you're not uncomfortable with taking rides from strangers."

"Not at all," the man said with a large grin, fierce and white, and resembling so much his brother for a moment, "I'm always happy to mount up a handsome man."

At least common ground was always a nice thing to stand upon.

\-----

**December 1, 1995 - Shiretoko-hanto, Hokkaido --**

' _A month passes by in the space of a few seconds. The 30th of every month turns its page to the 1st, and the sun rises just as I wish it never would_.'

It was the 22nd hour.

It was the 23rd hour.

It was the 24th hour.

When it came upon the zero hour, Law turned his face out of the dust-pile that may as motherfucking well have been (more than magic, more than medicine) his birthright, home sweet home, and watched the remnants of the fire die out from the cozy little hearth. Ashes, ashes... Sabo was long gone, and he was still there and unable to move, unable to let his chest press forward to inhale. And watched as the dull moon and stars suffered for it when hours one-thru-six were suffocated out of the sky and into the dawn of another day. Kikoku was with him again. That mattered. Sabo was not. And though it shouldn't have mattered more, it did, because those two things put together meant that he himself was no longer part of the bigger picture taking place over forty-three-million plus hours of the man’s immortal life.

And despite the light of the sun peeking into the cracked and dirty windowpanes, there was suddenly only this: The act of memorizing and forgetting the features of another man faster and with more precision than his own, staring him down from a deep and dark place where the light would only eat him up and kill his retinas if he looked directly into it. Vibrant yellows and blues that lit up his life warping into nothingness like a film projector sticking on a single frame -- bubbling, peeling, frying up on the skillet of a burning-hot bulb into a painful kind of white.

 _Sabo, Sabo, Sabo-ya_....

S  
a  
b  
o  
.  
.  
.

 _Do you remember the way we were as I do right now?_ If his thoughts could at all reach him, they wanted to tell him what love truly felt like....

So much passion. So much _fire_.

He wanted to tell him what it was like for him over the years, to be shamelessly wrecked over the tatami in an old ryokan, and across every other path they'd traveled in their lazy indulgences.

How filling and fulfilling it was, every time, the press and pull and drag of that beautiful cock striking the perfect chords inside of him. What it was like to easily and frequently finish untouched, maintaining a hard and thick erection as it dribbled a near-constant stream of cum as his prostate was milked into long, drawn out orgasms -- one after another after another that had him dried out the by the time morning came. How he'd wanted so badly to retributively pounce back every time, turn on the other man and fuck into him as though they could share the same skin, but never had the opportunity, left overly-sensitive and overly-spent with his balls crying out _no more no more no more, too much, too sensitive_.

How his libido acted as his heart's mouthpiece, how that translated when his pulse thrummed oh-so-fast when wild blue eyes gazed at him with that certain look -- the one that snapped at his strings like a koto and resonated as wanton urges -- chords struck, struck, struck. One day... _i shall show you how I want to strike you back._

I shall. I will. I will. (I must have you).

He wanted to tell him about their first night together in Tokyo, how he'd lost his reason for being until that blond-haired, blue-eyed dragon became it. The one that carried a light into the darkness and held him in the simplest, purest, most uncomplicated of ways and made him feel things again that he'd believed to have been long lost.

He wanted to tell him in his own words -- not words second-hand from a cantankerous demon that was still out for Law's blood, to date -- that the sea dragon that had died that night on the shores of Kozukumi island, Sanji, was alive again after seventy-five years of nothing but research into theories of resurrection magic and metempsychosis. Reborn, not unlike a phoenix when a few of Marco's fiery blue feathers were used in completing the spell that ran Law's blood running alive through the other dragon's veins. ' _Angel blood and phoenix feathers. Atonement mothered your child years ago; I know what you've accomplished already._ '

But there was dragon's blood in there, too. Did Sabo know that?  
They were all connected. Everything was connected.

And everything dies. **But not this time**.

He knew that Sabo had never truly left him, even as the calendar pages scattered to the wind of time flying by too fast, too quickly, and Law discovered that the festival had come and gone, _natsu no ryuu matsuri_ , before the passage of days could be even noted. So caught up in his work. Caught up in time. Caught up in living. He had told himself that he would one day put everything on pause, they could meet there, and have one perfect day together. Laugh together. Do stupid shit as stupid humans might. Eat takoyaki off the street stands, watch the kagura, buy each other cheap omamori, and be 'blessed' or whatever the fuck by the good luck symbols tucked inside. And, of course, view the red paper-mache dragon operated by mostly-naked men coordinating its terrible, cockeyed fucking dance.

And maybe he'd ask Sabo to dance for him, then; show humanity how it's actually done. But he hadn't. He hadn't. He didn't.

But he knew that, even then, even without those things taking place, as long nights drifted into long mornings where he would fall unconscious from days and days without rest at his desk with his papers scattered all around, he was never alone. When he would wake late in the afternoon, hair a mess and eyes glued practically shut with sleep...

The blanket sometimes found draped over his shoulders carried the scent of wildflowers -- that subtly unsweetened spice.

He knew -- when missing puzzle pieces in his research were sometimes drawn in for him when he awoke in the morning -- that Sabo was out there, somewhere, searching for answers in his own way, while Law shut himself up in the rooms of Ace and Marco's home. Until the sakura began to fall in the passage of far too many Springs passing by and his memories began to overwhelm him, he moved away into a deeper, more steel and concrete area of Tokyo to begin his own life there in solitude. Still, he knew he was never alone. ' _The evidence to the contrary is all around you_.'

He knew, when dragon's blood -- fresh dragon's blood -- was a missing component in his research, several small corked bottles of it from a living specimen were miraculously sitting on his desk come the next day, as though they had been there all along.

He wanted to tell him these things. What love felt like. Skidding mentally over the jagged cloud nines of his memories, reliving moments of joy. And every touch, every caress, kisses and mingling breaths.

He wanted to tell him how his power had greatly increased over time. He wanted to show him all the things he had learned, what he could do. But if only these thoughts alone could reach him:

How, without any photographs, any reminders to hold onto--

 

there are things that the heart does not forget.  
A deep, gentle voice that whispered hotly to him  
words that were maddening, perplexing, and enthralling.  
_Shiftthrustpresspushpull_ moving, moaning in the dark.  
Shadows climbing along the walls that looked as one.

 

' _I want to be inside of you_.'

That was what Sabo had said the first time they'd gone all the way in their coupling.

It had been perfect just like that, those minimalist words in that deep, velvet voice, the raw nakedness in his wild, fiery blue eyes that conveyed that there was nothing metaphorical to the preciseness of that simple statement. Law was as conscious at that moment as he was back then of the brevity that Sabo was able to say it like that at all.

That day, that evening, the sakura were still falling in the Spring over Tokyo; the air was cool above the blanket they were nestled beneath and the sky had been streaked orange and purple with the sun fallen low over the horizon, fanned with white and pink petals scattering in the breeze outside of the closed shoji. And on the inside, in the corner of the room, a few springs of yellow and white camellias in an artistic _ikebana_ arrangement that Sabo had loved and brought in were beginning to hang a touch sallow on the tips of their petals. Longing and waiting was their supposed denotation.

There was no need anymore, Law had said to him, for those flowers.

' _Law_ ,' he'd thought for a moment of not responding, if only so as to hear his name spoken again in that same tone, ' _I meant it. I want you. Let me move you_.'

Yet, he did manage to reply somehow between soft gasps as lips crossed the space over his heart and tasted his pulse, his lungs, hungrily memorizing the pattern of his breath. ' _I've never done this before_ ,' he admitted. Not anything before the fire dragon, not even so much as the kisses he placed on his skin, let alone the way that Sabo's hands slid around his body as though committing it to memory, as though he could play back by rote the feel of every cord to every muscle and the measurements of his arms around narrow hips, and how his palms cupped the insides of slender thighs. One-hundred years later, Law wondered if Sabo could still remember and dictate to him how they felt.

' _I haven't done this either_ ,' Sabo had replied, breathless, taking him by surprise as he trailed lips up his throat, his jaw -- ' _I've waited all of this time to meet you. Five-thousand years, Law. For this. For you._ ' -- mouth then capturing his own alive in a demanding kiss, bodies eclipsing, pressed together everywhere. A moan he couldn't hope to contain slipped when he'd felt the other man's cock glance against his own; Sabo had been completely hard, already seeping for him at the tip with just that slightest touch. Rubbing against each other in that way was only the beginning of a slow, tentative discovery of foreplay that lasted hours -- years, perhaps.

When Sabo finally took him, a tremble stole over Law's body that wouldn't stop; he'd felt too much, so much, so good, so very thick and deep inside; unabashed, he came within mere minutes. He'd shut his eyes so tight that there was a light show at their backs that he could feel from the opposite side of the world. That was the way stars should be, he'd thought -- not twinkling in their static placements as they did, but lighting up explosions in the sky that trickled sparkles down until they dissipated unto a new and fresh array of color and light and pattern, changing and dynamic.

He remembered how he'd wanted more, practically begged, wanting Sabo so badly that it caused him to ache.

' _I waited and waited. For the person who is going to stand on the stage by my side at the moment when we bring the world to an end. We were born to meet each other, Trafalgar Law. This bond between us cannot be broken.'_

Cannot  
Be  
Broken

Was what he'd said.

Remembering these things, laying on his back in the middle of Hokkaido hell, for splits of seconds, Law thought that he'd go so far to stab kikoku back through his heart -- blood filling that room and coating the dirt, bare fingers filleting on the blade -- if it meant that he could hear that sensual, low and silky voice spoken into his ear once more. Hear that sentiment again and feel it as acutely as he once had. But as soon as that thought came to mind, he dismissed it immediately. It was pathetic. He felt pathetic. Why was he doing this to himself? -- he thumped the back of his head on the floor with sigh, vexed, before he sat up and found his spotted hat where it'd tumbled off his head and across the floor. As he began to brush the dirt and crumbled pine-needles away from it, he felt something of an entirely different texture crumble beneath his fingers.

Dried-up flower petals... primroses, but not only those. Also camellia. And tiny, shriveled up buds of verbena. They were everywhere, all long-withered and dead.

Enchantment, waiting, longing. _I can't live without you_.

And he felt in that moment how much of a failure he'd become, more so than ever. Because he was Sabo's **soul mate** , just as Sanji was to Zoro, and Marco was to Ace, and none of these things were ever one-way streets.

He had to find Sabo and make everything right again.

Gathering himself to his feet and grasping his nodachi with a straightening of his brim low over yellow eyes, Law checked his phone (literally only that; 1995's version of black and white mobile communication made calls and did little else) from his coat. But as he suspected, there was no signal. Even the spell they used between them for summoning gave no result, not even the faintest hint or pull of a response to say that the message even went through to the other man. With nothing else to do, he pocketed a length of one of the shredded cords -- there was a possible meaning to it beyond a small metaphor, he strongly felt, and even if he were wrong, it couldn't hurt to ask. After fully collecting himself, he strode across the room to throw the cabin door open with a wave of his arm, forgoing the handle (mundane human shit) this time completely as he stepped out into the frigid sunrise.

' _Sabo-ya. Can you hear me? I need to be with you._ '

Nothing. Nothing. Radio silence. _Nothing is listening and nothing is answering_. And thus, shouldering his sword, Law's wings spread out in the clearing from their hiding place of nihility (space, time, energy, matter and their points of origin -- rifts in planes, planes ending the world in roller-coaster derailments from extra-dimensional pockets... this was where his wings were kept secret). Shape-shifting into their massive, massive span, dragging a thick blackness over the ground that sucked the light out of the sun and colored the world a dismal grey far beyond the cast of their shadow.

Hideous, he'd always thought. But ' _Amazing_ ', Ace had gushed long ago in polite fascination, carefully seeking permission to finger over feathers that weren't actually feathers at all. No hollows and no plumes, but solid and flat and venous, all _alive_ and subtly moving, and the other man had been taken by their unusual texture, smiling as they lightly curled up to meet his immense warmth. 

The two other men had been good to him over the years, Ace and Marco, and there was no better place to go for help than back home. Or their home, rather, however unlikely it was that anyone would remain in those wide-open, drafty December rooms when there was a whole world of summer elsewhere. Still, pushing off the ground and taking to the skies, he sped quickly into the light of dawn and directed his flight path to head further inland, cutting the amount of ocean he'd had to cross before turning towards Tokyo.

The chill winter air high up above Japan's northernmost region bit into his skin, numbing his face and hands and robbing him of all feeling but a deadening, stinging sensation, as though his blood were crystallizing in his veins. Only growing colder, harsher as time carried forward until the point where a soft haze of snow began to fall and his visibility was lost along with it. The air was too thin and barren above the cloud cover and made his head feel sway, too light to continue, forcing him to find a landing point. It was just as well; he had a long trip ahead of him and going without rest in that weather would be of no benefit. Pragmatically, he made for Sapporo and within the hour, landed on a building's rooftop; a giant, concrete monstrosity in the center of one of the city's outermost wards.

Even as his wings straddled the line between existences, the sky remained a deep, dark mildew of grey clouds and his heart felt strung somewhere out on their distant horizon, in a place where Sabo kept himself in hiding. From thought, from sight, from feeling....

With his phone finally at full bars, he made a call, just in case, and was surprised when it connected after only a handful of rings.

" _Hai_ ," a soft voice answered, laden with a musical, tenor sleep.

"Sorry for calling so early. It's Law. Can you put on Hiken-ya...?"

"He's not here; he went stateside to meet up with his little brother..." Marco replied in an almost reticent way, atypical to his familiar, eased humor. "Actually, it's good that you called, yoi. We should talk. But not like this. Come back to Tokyo."

Law exhaled, his breath fogging the chill of the air, a wash of anxiety bubbling up from his stomach acids as he replied, "I'm heading there now. Why? What's going on?" Knowing that what was coming next wasn't going to be good news --

There was a lengthy pause on the line.

"We think... something happened between Sabo and Zoro last night. No one knows what fully went down, but the scene is pretty bloody. And both of them have gone missing since."

Law felt his heart stop and the world began shatter out from beneath his feet -- was it ending? Was this how the world would end? A voiceless question would come with no answer. If anything, the snow flurry was the silent response of the universe and a free fall plummet from the rooftop of insignificance -- his mistakes cluttering his vision in frozen precipitation clinging and sticking to long, black eyelashes. Black heart, black wings, black flower petals, black everything, so close to finding a oneness with the pavement below in the way his cell phone smashed to smithereens on the tarmac, having slipped from his fingers before ending the call.

In horror, he wondered if perhaps Zoro had never been after Law's head for his revenge, after all.

' _I've met with Roronoa Zoro. He told me. I know. I know, Law._ ' But the world couldn't end here. Sabo couldn't end here; they promised they'd be together and he, unlike Law, had thus far kept all of the promises that he'd made.

An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. (A heart for a heart). Was that how it was going to be? But Sabo was stronger than anyone but a fair few, far between. And a demon, however regarded as one of the strongest and oldest of his ilk, would have to have a sort of luck far beyond his ken to have the upper hand against the flame struck intellect of the vermilion dragon, however stupidly impulsive he proved himself to sometimes be.

The icy air current caught beneath his wings before he could touch the ground and a powerful swoop pushed him back into the colorless stratus-wisps. The velocity in which he traveled above the snow-covered landscape doubled from the invisible path he'd left behind.

His journey was long but uneventful and unremarkable, the brim of his hat keeping most of the snow from needling into his eyes before he cleared the storm front, but the numbness in them from the cold, as well as the rest of his body, set in deeply, blistering extremities left bare to the elements. He would live, he would heal, and the tingling pins and needles of pain as he dropped from the sky hours later and into the barren wasteland that had become of the unkempt and wild garden courtyard centered in Ace in Marco's expensive traditional-style home in the Meguro district, went largely ignored.

The phoenix was already at the fusuma, waiting for him as if he knew the exact moment that the _yokai_ would land and where. Marco's senses were as sharp as his talons, could almost be considered more of a second sight with a bird's eye view of the world, even when seen from below and not above it.

"Oi, Law, you look like hell," Marco greeted, all Mr. Congeniality as they stepped inside together, "Sit at the kotatsu and I'll put on tea."

Scoffing at the heated table in the middle of the main room, as inviting as it looked, he rounded on the other man, ignoring his hospitality in lieu of finding actual answers. Such as how, he demanded sharply, could Sabo have been in a skirmish with demon Roronoa Zoro when he had also been with Law in an abandoned home in the middle of the Hokkaido wilds the night before. The way that Sabo looked, as though he'd been there for long and empty years with his dead flowers, pale and chill in death-like emaciation, wrists encircled with the thin lengths of tattered rope that he then brandished in front of Marco at that very moment. Nearly spitting in a fury of mixed emotion that came forth as a rage with no outlet for its direction but towards the tall blond phoenix, who showed his irrationality large patience, sidestepping him as he brought the tea setting to the kotatsu and knelt there to pour two cups.

One was set opposite of him at the table silently, pointedly.

Law understood. And he sighed, settling himself (however begrudgingly) with socked feet folded over another under the table. Somehow, he had been mindful of the fact that he'd have been scalped by the phoenix if he hadn't removed his shoes and left them at the _genkan_. While forcing himself to calm, warming his toes and fingertips alike between teacup and heat coils, Marco began to finally speak.

"It's been about eighty years now since you first came here, yoi."

"Longer than that," Law replied, "I was here before with Sabo, but... since you and I met--" On the night that Sanji died, or more accurately, the night that Law had killed him. "-- And Sabo took off on his own, it's been about that long, yes."

"Right. That's a long time," Marco said, turning his tiny cup by its lip with a comparably large hand. "A lot happened that you don't know about. If you feel guilty about missing the festivals, you should stop that. Sabo didn't stick around long, and didn't come at all after the second year. There was... he had someone else after that, a female sea dragon, yoi."

The chill of Law's skin became ice shards in his epithelium, poison in his veins. "If you're implying that Sabo-ya has been unfaithful or philandering, I highly doubt that," he said, eyes narrowing, "I've never had any reason to believe that he is any less devoted than I have been. However absent of each other, we're mated. End of story. He does have a large network of friends and allies, but they are no more than that."

"It's true, though. I wish it weren't, but not only was he with this girl -- and for a long time -- he was trying to actively nest with her, start a new generation, sit on eggs in a cave and hide treasure or whatever dragons do." Marco's eyes were full of gentle remorse, a touch of pity, but Law had nothing to say. He could swallow, his throat working, but things only went down and nothing came up, mind and mouth refusing to cooperate with each other.

Before the silence became an awkward one, the other man continued to speak, "Ace knows more about it than I do... but is more obligated to keep his brother's secrets than to doing the right thing and tell you. While you and Sabo are related to me by association equally, and that means that I don't have to betray anyone by not wanting to keep my mouth shut about this anymore. And about last night... what you saw was probably an _ikiryou_ or an eidolon. Sabo is overseas right now. Their little brother has taken special interest in whatever happened; it's a family matter now. Luffy and Ace will find Sabo and Zoro and figure that mess out. But when they do, I don't doubt that your dragon is eventually going to come looking for you, yoi."

Marco paused there, sipping neatly from his cup within the palm of his hand with the other bracing its side elaborately, properly. "What you do then is entirely up to you. But according to Ace, Sabo didn't know about Sanji until recently. And how hard you worked, and for how long to make it all happen for him... I heard he didn't take hearing about this well. Guilty conscience might have been understating. You know, he hid you from his girlfriend, yoi -- on purpose. When word finally got back to her that her new squeeze was already mated, she was _pissed_... to say the least. Sabo came back here for a while after that, beat down to a bloody pulp, sobbing like a little kid and rambling poetic nonsense as usual. But he was asking for it. He actually thought if he tried hard enough, he could break your bond and move on. That he even thought that it could be a possibility, I took as a huge fucking insult, yoi."

Understandably. The phoenix dies in a burst of flame. The phoenix is reborn from his ashes.

There was no one else in existence that knew more than Marco that nothing, not even death, could so much as touch the connection born between himself and the man forever fated to stand beside him in that endless cycle. His bond with Ace was unique and profound.

As was his own with Sabo... or so he'd always thought. But maybe he'd been more alone in that than he ever knew. Hiding his wings, what he was, kept in the dark and feeling along its concrete walls for a single, fulfilling breath of light. All the while, remained... caged.

Loveless.

Replaceable.

"We..." Law's hand lifted from the table, watching it tremble in something akin to horror before reaching for his own cup to make it stop. It was too hot, still. That was good, wasn't it? Burning, not freezing. "... are soulmates. But I am empty. Instead of two people bearing two halves... he has a whole that fits into that space inside of me, like a lock and key. I don't know what that means. I don't know if that's something that-- but he said to me... He said...."

He said.  
He said.  
He said.

' _This bond between us cannot be broken_.'

"Did he ever believe that...? Did... he... "

The teacup that slid from his fingers was caught by Marco's deft hand as the man was immediately at his side, settling it back to the table without spilling a drop before his arms circled Law's torso from behind and held on just as the _yokai_ collapsed. Like his second sight, his clairvoyant sense, had known that the cup would fall, that Law would too -- the phoenix also knew, as he wrapped him tightly, pulled him against the strength of his body, the moment that the truth would sink in, and when Law's next inhale would sever off into the first sound of panic.

Trembling, crying, all Law could think of was the smell of wildflowers. Not sweet but subtly spicy, natural and green -- of Spring mornings after a night of rain when all of the scents of the earth come alive in the air. Flowering trees, evergreens, daffodils, gerbera, and anemone.

With burning pressure behind his eyes and sinuses, throat twisting and contracting, the memory of Sabo's unique scent lingered in his nostrils with the feel of his kiss on his lips -- the ones he then pressed together to muffle an agonized moan ripping through his chest, stifling it into something more whimpering and softly human, something less monster. Less like a banshee baying at the sky and more like the long ago lost child that Sabo had first met, clinging to yet another stranger for something... something... anything. Validation. That he should be allowed to keep on living, that he had done something that _mattered_ and was still worth saving from his own self after all these empty years. That he belonged within the comforting confines of life itself. A notion he could feel flowing and dancing and crackling out sparks in the fire beneath Marco's skin as his hands grappled the man's shoulders and his forehead hit his sternum. Eternity in that human-shaped body, feeling phoenix-breath moving and phoenix-heart pumping, good and strong and well-meaning.

But ultimately, Marco was wrong.

"He always knew..." he managed to say, choking on his own words, on his mournful tears. And Marco somehow understood what it was he meant. In the oft feeling of being watched, of not being _alone_ , the scent on his blanket, and providing him with everything he'd needed, when he needed it. "He came... secretly... he-- he is so fucking stupid."

Marco was missing an excruciatingly vital piece of the puzzle. But he didn't know the dragon the way that Law did -- the way he could picture the outline of it to know what shape would eventually lock into that absent place.

"Did he now?" A large hand came to rest at the back of Law's head, running through his hair, brotherly, but he could scarcely feel it over the ache of his heart as he cried on and on, wetting Marco's chest with his streaming eyes, too weak to so much as raise his head. "How long ago was that? For about... the last 9 years or so, Sabo's been kind of living in a daze, in and out of sleep like a enshrined Kami. Wrapped up in the rope you have there, yoi. It's called _shimenawa_ , by the way. Shinto followers use it for purification for sacred areas or objects inhabited by benevolent spirits to ward off evil. He snapped awake about four days ago. After Ace told him about your success in bringing back the sea dragon, yoi."

Digesting this, Law said nothing, feeling his loneliness -- Sabo's loneliness, too -- fill him up to the brim of his own existence. Filled up with a sadness within so large, so profuse, and so total that the only thing that would escape his mouth if he dared to open up his voice would be the sound of his pained, inhuman moans. Hiccups, shuddering sobs, the strangled sound of losing, of _loss_. The tingling numbness of his blood going impoverished from its level of carbon dioxide made his head feel light and faint as his breath came in and out far too quickly, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

"Oi, oi, don't cry, brat... here," Marco said, reaching for his abandoned teacup and gently maneuvered Law's head away from its slump against his chest to press the glass to his lips, "Drink up. The bitterness will help."

And so he drank. And drank. To the last drop.

There was some old Japanese adage adopted from Chinese medicine about bitter tea being a necessary component to the heart -- with the sweet and salty and sour and spicy, a heart that lacked in bitterness would fall out of balance and into sickness. While none of that was true, these remedies were still sound as they contained a variety of anti-arrhythmic or anti-inflammatory alkaloids.

Or in this case, a bitter-tasting sleeping drug.

When and where and how Marco had slipped it into his drink, Law didn't know, couldn't have seen, and couldn't have cared.

He was grateful and welcoming of the heavy drift of quick unconsciousness, regardless.


	3. Chapter 3

The world was dark when Law awoke, curled up beneath a white cotton blanket on a futon mattress that felt too hot against his skin despite the chill of the winter air coming in through the thin walls. His clothing had all been removed with a pair of snugly-fit, soft, black cotton boxers that didn't belong to him covering his more intimate parts from being completely indecent.

He wondered how long he had slept, but then again, it really didn't matter.

**December 9, 1995 - Meguro-ku, Tokyo --**

Pale light, presumably from the moon, filtered in from a crack in the board-covered shoji and painted a tiny crease over his body through the dim blue cast of the room graced by Marco asleep in phoenix form against the opposite wall. A soft, cooing trill would come from his beak now and then and a taloned foot twitched in the wake of some dream like a dog being scratched behind its ear. With Ace tucked securely and lovingly beneath his wing with human fingers tangling into the low-burning feathers on his chest against the faint, shimmering representation of his tattooed crest... if the moment were to be painted, it would have captured the perfect expression of their souls, contented and warmed by that simple intermingling.

They were painful to look at. Law was alone and yet not in the physical sense, watching as his own wings lay unfettered behind him, spread out in a pitch black current where the light from the phoenix fire collapsed back as though they were uncoiling some impassible fog into the air and trapping him into forever the dark.

But rather than thinking too much on it, Law wiped the sleep from his eyes and looked towards the errant little sliver of moonlight, brazen enough to touch him in his true form when little else would dare.

There was no questioning what had drawn him up from a dreamless sleep. The light wanted him -- it was hungry for him.

He could feel it as before -- a something calling to him, calling _into_ him and twining into his spirit like a siren's gently, mysteriously bewitching song pulling him up from the bed and towards the garden like a sailor onto the jagged rocks of a rather dismal end. Or a dark angel hapless but to seek out a red dragon. Pale and wane and fragile and dissonant as the man perched upon the rooftop facing the courtyard with his face pointed up at the sky. The dirt and dust had been washed all away and his hair moved with the press of an icy wind, golden curls gleaming as they brushed against his cheeks, against his scarred face, and the fur collar of a thick, white winter coat that puffed about him like a cloud. The expression he wore was full of mirth, but the glow of his blue eyes seemed fiercely troubled, like there was so much wrong with him and wrong with the world he saw that he couldn't help but to laugh.

That changed as soon as Law crossed the ice-cold stone pathways with bare feet until he met the wooden balustrade beneath the dragon, angling his neck high to meet his wide-open, surprised and pained, ethereal gaze.

"Law... oh, damn you," Sabo's voice was so quiet that it was nearly mouthed more than said and the lower ridges of his eyes quivered and watered as though they meant to shut them tightly but he couldn't allow it -- not then. Not with what they were tunnel visioning on for the first time as Law realized that he'd forgotten to hide his wings away as they swayed behind him, so large, so profuse, their uppermost curves stood taller than his own height and the ends of long, pointed flight feathers at the bottom trailed along the ground like the long train of an evening gown.

Black, black, blacker than a midnight when the refuse of the universe known as the moon and stars and distant planets were all blocked from the sky under the cover of dark clouds. Like the gaping maw in the back of a monster's throat when its mouth is opened to swallow up a nightmare dreamer in the ante meridian. But they were flowers, like many kinds with many names and many meanings. Stained black, that could mean dark intent... could be an absence of color... but was also what became of its spectrum when each and every shade overlapped into a swirling vortex. Everything, all things, and all flowers; the parts that made up artificial, yet still organic angel wings, a secret garden of black, black, black --

Nothingness, but sometimes... it was all things coalescing into obsolescence. So much like the singularity of a black hole, the pupil amidst a fiery, cerulean corona staring down at him from above with so much love, so much cruelty, so much devotion, and so much distance that Law didn't care anymore about the past or present or future as he reached out his hand for Sabo.

' _Touch me_ ,' his mind said when words his mouth was too dry to speak and his words were all still tinged too heavy with sleep to form upon his tongue, ' _Sabo-ya_.'

The  
world  
could  
stop turning  
here.  
And he wouldn't notice.

"Baby, I can't. If I start now, it is all I will ever do," Sabo whispered, his tone soft and heartbroken, lost, and shaken. "While never believing that I've deserved it. You're too beautiful, Trafalgar Law. I've always thought so, but _look at you now_. You're perfect. You feel perfect. You even _smell_ perfect. I was right all along.... about the almond verbena. I can see them. I'm glad."

Placing the palms of his hands upon the tile, the dragon pushed himself onto to his feet and turned, walking away over the sloped and uneven roof with the same grace he would carry if it were level ground.

"Wait, don't leave again," Law said, pleading, his arm dropping uselessly back to his side, "I hate that you keep doing this."

"I know," the blond paused, sighing deeply, sadly, his breath fogging in the cold air, "But if I don't, I will lose myself and take you down with me -- map out utopias on your skin and your flower-petal wings and wrap myself up in nothing but disorder. Be patient with me, angel."

A last small smile was offered over his shoulder, and then he vanished, just as before.

The only thing that mattered, the only thing that could feel entirely solid and real in the _yokai_ 's world had gone again, dissipated as if his presence had been no more than an illusion. Another eidolon. And Law's weight sagged tiredly down to the ground and he pressed his knees to his chest as his wings stretched and splayed out uselessly behind him. Gripping onto the railing supports, he let his head hang between his forearms, allowing himself to be overcome by his thoughts. Or lack thereof. Emotions filling up his empty places, frustration, pain, anger, hurt, and none of the above, or all of the above. Feelings that had no name, feelings with many names and descriptors in something that only Sabo (and his ability to speak all languages) could think of comparable words for. Or maybe there were none at all, nothing at all, only something that could come marginally close by way of metaphor.

... The way he felt was the cold seeping into his skin, the clouds slowly drifting over the illuminated rabbit of the moon, just as history began to overwhelm him, and the snow crept up on his heels as it began to lightly tumble through the air.

"Holy shit, Law, what the hell are you doing naked out here, you psychopath? -- It's _freezing_ out."

He lifted his head at the sound of Ace's voice coming across the garden from the open door, hugging himself as he padded the distance between them with white shavings of frozen condensation sticking prettily to his dark hair and thick eyelashes. A hand burning with warmth gripped his arm and half-dragged him to his feet as he gave little resistance, and a heavenly soft black bathrobe from off the younger man's back was draped over his shoulders.

"Thanks. It's good to see that you're well, Hiken-ya."

"Mmhm." They began to walk back inside the house together. "As hot as you look with those ridiculously hard nips while wearing my drawers, I prefer you not frozen to death. And not with such a depressed aura. Sabo's taken off again, I take it?"

"Yeah. You don't seem very surprised," Law replied as the fusuma was shut behind him and, following Ace, they moved back into the bedroom -- or what was currently the bedroom when it served more of a multi-purpose function during daylight hours when the futons were rolled up and put away. On the account of the still-sleeping phoenix, he lowered the volume of his voice. "I understand, but I also can't agree with him. We have a problem, and we can either work it out separately or together. The difference is that only one of those things is going to make me more miserable... Anyway, how long have you been back?"

Ace yawned as he dropped back onto the bed next to his lover, stretching his arms with his mouth open wide. "A few hours. I'm pretty lagged," he said, then patted the space next to him. "You should come lay down over here with us where it's warm. Marco doesn't bite. Although I might, but only because I like you."

If there were anyone that could lift a sullen mood, Law was looking directly at him at that exact moment, with his freckled, boyish charms and devilish smile that suited the demon blood running through half-human veins and smouldering in his dark eyes. Dropping the younger man's robe onto his futon, he carefully shifted his wings out of their current dimension, folding them back into the drawer where the fabric of the universe kept all things of excess before kneeling down next to Ace. Where his movements were tentative, the half-demon was not in the least, grappling him amicably onto the futon to lay on his side, and then curled one of marco's lax wings over them like a blanket of blue flame.

As before, the light shirked immediately back from his skin, but after a few moments, rolling just millimeters around his body, it began to experimentally reach out to him, bolder in this close proximity. It was softer than he'd expected -- appearing as a low blaze but felt as soft as down feathers (softer than his own -- the tiny verbena and their overpowering fragrance). They danced, they frolicked over his skin once deeming him a safe person, and were all so soft, _so warm_ , Law had to bite his tongue to keep from moaning in a garish amount of contentment as he was enveloped around his shoulders and hips where the most contact was made.

"Anyway, I'm sorry, but... I'm going with Sabo on this one," Ace said once they were settled, not in the least concerned with waking the heavily-sleeping phoenix. "At least, looking at it from an outside perspective. Maybe in the short term it would be great to be together again... and I'm rooting for you two, I really am. But you have to admit, your relationship has never been healthy. Your communication isn't fabulous; you're a quiet one, and figuring out Sabo is like answering a sphinxes riddle half the time. And before he was the one running off, it was always you."

"I know. It's hypocritical, but that was never long term. A few weeks, a month, never more than that. Understand, I was very alone before I met Sabo-ya. I've watched everyone I've ever loved die. And going from over one-hundred years of purposeful solitude to having someone beside me every waking moment, and _needing_ that presence as much as I did... was honestly terrifying. It was hard to even conceptualized, at times, that maybe it wasn't all some divine set up for what was left of my spirit to be broken."

Ace smiled to him, a touch sad at its edge for him, but reassuring. "I can see that... you two were peas in a pod for a long while. It's a nice feeling, but being independent matters too. Letting him be the largest part of your life while not centric to it is for the best. That is how I feel. Maybe I got lucky meeting Marco when I was still a kid. I still had my normal ambitions, things I wanted to do... y'know, all these dreams. If I didn't hold onto them, when Marco isn't... among us... I don't think I'd manage."

"Your strength is admirable, Hiken-ya. Still, Marco said that Sabo-ya had--" he broke off here, clenched his eyes, re-opened them, and then tried again, "Wanted to divorce himself from our bond. Is this true?"

Ace's expression looked like he deeply wished he could say 'no', but couldn't, his arm draping across Law's waist and let an apology be his affirmation. "I’m sorry, Law."

"That's... too far. Too cruel. There have been many moments when I honestly can't help myself to believe 'this man is not in love with me at all, only compelled to be here by some fated obligation', and I'm not unjustified. But his other actions... they bewilder me completely."

(He could have spent the last century plucking the feathers of his wings--)  
_He loves me..._  
(--unto no actual result).  
_He loves me not_.

"Yeah. Well. You're not entirely wrong," the half-demon replied, the tip of his thumb tracing Law's hipbone idly. "But it's not that he doesn't love you -- everyone loves you -- but it's more complicated than that. He'd do anything for you -- literally _anything_. But more than that, he was worried that you'd give up. That if you felt bad enough, you might bring Sanji back using your own life. I don't think you even want to hear how far he's gone all these years to prevent that."

"Heh. I am not all that altruistic -- he should give me a little more credit. But I've already figured it out, either way. Marco had the impression that he was leaving me for someone else, but he wouldn't do that. I know better. And as soon as he said the words 'female sea dragon' and 'nesting', I understood. He was, in a perverse way, doing what he could for Sanji's cause."

_'Angel blood and phoenix feathers.'_

And dragon blood. _Sabo's blood_.

But making something out of nothing was beyond the scope of Law's magic, and a dragon could never be born again without this one last essential component--

"He was trying to procure a dragon egg. A fertilized one," Law concluded, "And unfortunately, he succeeded. There was no way to resurrect Sanji without it -- the cells of his own body were far too atrophied to return to it and his mind could have never been intact. I needed to start anew or find a host. I was going to give up, but... quite suddenly, a young woman delivered an unmarked box to me, and there it was."

"I'll bet it was her. Poor girl. It was a shitty thing to do when he didn't even think it would work. As soon as he found out that you'd done it, he rushed off to go see Sanji for himself... but Zoro's watching the area like a damn hawk -- still wants to see you dead, and whether or not your abilities brought him back, he doesn't want anyone not in his corner anywhere near Sanji."

"Understandably. Now, what happened there, anyway?"

"Well. Heh. Zoro's strong -- like Marco kind of strong." At the sound of his name, the phoenix shifted lightly in his sleep, brushing the heat of his feathers over the two bare-skinned men with a soft trill in the back of his throat as he dreamed on of some other happy place. Ace paused, glancing at his lover with a broad smile, affection full in his dark eyes. Once Marco re-settled, he continued to speak, quieter, "But either way, Zoro lost. Badly. He won't be actively harassing you anymore, I don't think."

"I guess one good thing has come of this," Law replied.

"I suppose..." Ace trailed there for a moment, "But if Sabo thinks he needs time, then he needs time. You didn't see how fucked up with guilt he was. Time may not mean so much to things that are born immortal, but it heals them just as much as you and me."

Another voice spoke, heavy like Summer descending upon the December air as the blue light dimmed somewhat, and the flames around him closed in tighter, solid and insufferably, deliciously, heavenly soft. "You'll be all right, yoi."

The reassurance was not necessary. But--

"Thank you, Bird-ya."

Law said it, anyway, and meant it.

 

\-----

 

**March 31, 2005 - Nagano-shi--**

 

There was no light anymore, only shapes. Shadows, desaturated outlines moved about in a shade or two less than black that would sometimes shudder throughout the darkness.

Something evil creeping up from the shadows, from out of the closet and from beneath the bed -- how protective is that warm and familiar blanket thrown over a child's head in the night? What saves him from the notion that he was simply born to bleed? To be born only to be devoured away from the smiles and innocence of his youth until waking up one day, noticing in the mirror that the horror that he'd once hid himself away from in terror in its more puerile state is the tired and strung-out face that stares right back at him? What saves him? Where should he hide?

What keeps him going from day to day? What keeps him living? What drags him out of bed in the morning to the bathroom where he stares down his own worst enemy? A demon there of the worst kind -- the inner kind -- ten sharp claws versus two useless angel wings, and he was always in a state of loss, of losing. Waking up dead to a mo(u)rning of all of the things that could have been, like some war story of his life that could never tell, stringing his proud medals of old wounds alongside the suspended state of those questions that never had any solid answers, just illusive brush-offs for replies.

Behind the mirror was a breakfast of paracetamols. Use only as directed. Children should consult a doctor before consuming this product, and adults may take one or two every six hours while symptoms persist. If you're no longer human but resemble one enough to pass under the radar, twenty sometimes sufficed.

He splashed at evil's face with water, brushed its teeth, dressed it up in an expensive suit and white coat before sending it off upon humanity in the well put-together disguise of saving lives. But he did have healing hands, it was true. There was human skin that crawled with varicose lines, and calculus-riddled, dragged open, punctured arteries. Clotting atria, cut with scalpels and lasers and fibrillated into some semblance of stability/sanity. Cauterizing bad conduits, ill-responding nodes, and feedback loops.

There was a script made of comforting words memorized somewhere in his head that guided him, more than his patients, through every pre-op else he fall back on the improvisation of blunt truth, 'i'm going to thread your veins and heart with wires and shock you, feel out your circuitry, then burn congenital defect from out of your body.' And that never made anyone feel good about a routine EP study, did it?

Ablation. Ablation. Cardiac ablation.

All the while, the arrhythmia he cured from others with the irony of his cardiology having long ago arrested itself was not lost on him.

The blood vessels under Dr. Trafalgar Law's eyes were in perpetual hemorrhage.

He was well-dressed, handsome, a half-life, half-thing, a magical being playing pretend at being the kind of human he might have had the potential to once become, had he the ability to grow up as one. What his family might have wanted for him, Corazon too, and where their hopes (as best as he could imagine) might have hung as he closed his eyes and remembered his biological father's kind face and thorough, patient teachings. However archaic, the man had been brilliant, and his lessons stood the test of time. And Law was trying to be that long ago boy who'd listened to his words so intently, avid to learn everything -- trying to be the surgeon he remembered he'd once dreamt of becoming. He really was. And he was mostly okay, mostly satisfied with his career path, mostly all right with making a move up north to Nagano after beginning his fellowship under his made-up, lofty credentials, and the drastic need in that city for cardiologists, and specifically electrophysiologists, had galvanized him. He was fine. He had adjusted.

And the distraction was welcome. Making an honest attempt of beginning his days with the cheerful greetings of 'ohayou gozaimasu' and ending them with the tired, obligatory 'otsukaresama deshita'. Supposedly he was underpaid, but the numbers in his bank account were constantly rising, and the woman who did his accounting wanted in his pants just badly enough (she looked so much like his younger sister might have, that it could make him feel ill sometimes -- Nami, wasn't that the woman's name? -- well, whatever) that he was probably doing quite well for himself. It was one of many offers, but all of them were let off with characteristic demur.

At home, when he was alone in his apartment at night, a handful of benzodiazepines with a bloody mary chaser (or straight vodka when feeling less ambitious) helped him sleep, usually with some late night NHK program blaring from the television as his body would fall limp onto the sofa cushions as his central nervous system underwent collapse. The noise blocked out the repetition in his head, made him forget the sound of ~~his screaming, crying, breaking down~~ confusing poetry murmured in his ear in a dragon's low, purring cadence. While his bed, pristine and well made, remained unslept in. Anything otherwise, and wouldn't be able to stop himself from remembering a long ago time when the smell of Sabo's hair would always be there on the pillow next to his own.

Maybe it hadn't been real.  
Or maybe he'd killed it.

What was one relationship amongst so many other casualties?

Would it ever mean anything to all of the families he'd destroyed?

His apartment was close to the hospital and his walk home from work was a part of his ritual, pacing the brisk elements like some faceless, nameless no-one in a fancy suit and wool overcoat, wingtip oxfords and visible tattoos, looking more or less like a posterchild for Alexander McQueen stepping down the runway of the cracked, cruddy Nagano sidewalks. Always the same route, the same stop at the nearby conbini along the way with the same purchases -- a bottle of vodka, a can of tomato juice, one lime, and three bonito-filled onigiri.

As a doctor, this was not what he would call a recommended diet.

Spring was happening in the midst of this routine, and holding up an umbrella in his right hand as he paced the downstreets was a sight more common than ever. The rain was cumbersome that night, pelleting from the sky, splashed back from tire tread, unphased by the canopy of tree branches growing fuller and thicker with white and pink blossoms and almost ready for their yearly debacle. The only difference it made to him was the necessity of that one extra accessory, while his expensive briefcase and cheap plastic shop bag were forced to share his left side, bobbing at his thigh.

Eventually, he became aware of his phone buzzing, but his hands were full, and a little bit of struggling and juggling worked it from his pocket only to see a Tokyo number with no name affixed flash up on the screen. He wasn't going to answer, and if it really fucking mattered at all, they would leave a message. If it wasn't the hospital paging him, then it could wait until morning, business hours, 6AM-8PM or **G** et **T** he **F** uck **O** ut, because his long days afforded everyone time enough to reach him. The caller was no one he knew personally, in any event, as the few friends he kept would have politely notified him of a change of number. Or in case of a handsome, half-demon flame-thrower, SMS'd one of Marco's (quite glorious) dick pics (Ace was a lucky man).

He could tell it was Marco for the same reason that, when he reciprocated the sentiment, Ace had replied amicably that one could assume that dark blue was not Law's natural hair color.

(For the record, it was naturally blue-black as Marco's was blond -- it only happened to grow in darker _elsewhere_ ).

Regardless, as he pressed 'ignore' to stop the buzzing and dropped his phone back into his coat, he was alerted to another sound, less digital. A sad whimpering like a starved or sick puppy came from a rain-soaked topiary that he vehemently decided to ignore, just as he had his phone call. It was none of his business, really. Unwanting of distractions, his only intent was to collapse into his lofty, high-rise apartment, turn on the news, mix his drink and stare into it with its stalk of celery poking jauntily up at him. And wonder, if he said the drink's name three times into the hazy red rendition of himself reflected at the bottom of the glass, if some girl with long hair and bleeding eyes would crawl out of it and down his throat and introduce him to some semblance of actual inebriation for once.

Bloody mary, bloody mary, bloody--

\-- hell. There was blood in the air. Definitely blood.

It gave him pause, stopped him on the sidewalk. That familiar, rank copper, sticking into his sinuses like a bad perfume commingling in the air with the smell of oily cooking and wet pavement. The busybody, inner physician in him sighed as it made appeal towards his inner misanthrope and won the argument quickly as the latter much preferred to do whatever it needed to just keep the noise level in his head at a low. At least the booze and pills weren't going anywhere anytime soon. Setting down his umbrella, Law crouched back on his heels and shoved his hands into the greens of the decorative shrub... where a tiny _bakemono_ was tangled amidst the sharp twigs at its center, just a little baby, all scratched up and dirty, cold, and wet, with streaks of blood matted in its white fur.

It was a bear _yokai_ , practically newborn, so small it could fit into the cup of his palms and staring at him with disproportionately large, sad eyes. There was no mother in sight, and a stretch of his senses into the larger area came up inconclusive. Swearing, he tore the skin on the backs of his own hands in wrenching it free from its prison and tucked it under his coat. These things were usually omens... and maybe it was meant for him, or maybe it wasn't -- but with his apartment close by, if anything supernatural in nature occurred or appeared in the area, he'd know about it, and patching the thing up and giving it shelter for the night wasn't a lot for the universe to ask of him.

While his building didn't allow pets, he was fortunate that the bear was quiet and well-behaved as he (Law decided it was a 'he' for now -- not inclined to get so attached to take a closer look) was secreted into the shopping bag with a vague hope it didn't suffocate on the plastic to pass through the lobby and elevator unnoticed. And in the meanwhile, someone else wasn't as well-learned at taking hints and his phone was driving him insane and

wouldn't  
stop  
fucking  
buzzing.

(Fuck off).

Once inside the sanctity of his home -- though not so much 'home' as it was the impersonal safe space he used for going unconscious every night -- he dropped his things on the kitchen island and stripped off his coat and sports jacket, and gave his attention to the bear cub's wounds with unbuttoned and rolled up shirt-cuffs. Skin and fur was carefully inspected where it folded back like a collapsed accordion, looked worse than it actually was, and took all of ten seconds after cleaning them for the smallest bubble of his power to move those malleable little wounds back into flawless, unmarred solidity as though they were never there at all. The mud was washed from small paws before it could be tracked everywhere and the rest of him was given a brisk rubdown with a wet cloth. He was healthy beneath the dirt, ears perked, eyes clear and could follow the movement of his hand without drifting, belly round and thick, and his fur downy and soft... **and totally not cute, dammit**.

His phone was going off again urgently, and he still didn't care. Instead, he unpackaged one of the conbini onigiri from its plastic wrap, grabbed a plate from a cupboard to set it on, and dropped it onto the kitchen floor. Whatever animal _yokai_ ate -- he imagined they should like fish, and if not, it would eat it anyway if it became hungry enough -- sustenance was sustenance. It was all he had, anyway, aside from beer in the fridge, uncooked rice in the pantry, coffee, and so many empty bottles in the garbage bin that any given group at a Hollywood Alcoholics Anonymous meeting could scoff at him and say 'well, now that's just excessive.'

Satisfied enough that his guest had everything it needed for the time being, Law put his things away in their more rightful place and resumed his nightly ritual, this time to hit the shower and wash the day away from his skin with nearly scalding hot water. Quick, methodical, with non-descript smelling shampoo; shampoo-scented shampoo, he supposed, ironically called 'Spring Rain'; and moisturizing soap-scented soap, 'Mountain Fresh', washing his hair and body with all of its nooks and crannys, ridding himself of that clinical, antimicrobial, antibacterial, anti-everything sanitation that made him feel dried up and cracked all over. The bathroom was a sauna when he finished and his reflection escaped the fogged-up mirror; he didn't need to see the plum-colored circles beneath his eyes to know they were still there, as always, nor look deeper in to see that in the pale yellows of his irises, lightning sometimes struck in jagged lines of white against the backdrop of that jaundice-like shade.

His power was growing. But not just that. It was _searching_ , calling out of him, _clawing_ out of him sometimes, looking for something else it could sink its teeth into. _Someone_ else. It wanted to hurt, to shock, to caress, and to kill. To find a heartbeat and drag it into the rhythm of his own rapid pulse, and move through it with its invasive, electric incisions -- precisions -- lascivisions.

Move through it. Move with it. _Let me move you_...

... Is what it wanted.

Throwing a towel around his waist, Law swept through the black and white numbness of his apartment, absent of all color save for a bright yellow accent wall in the living area decorated with colorless old maritime photographs that had no meaning to him that he hadn't even taken himself, nor had he ever really looked at closely. Someone else had been paid to fill this place and make it look somewhat inhabited. Kikoku, propped in the corner of his bedroom, was the only thing of meaning to him in this luxurious place. It was comfortable, but very unnecessary. And on a normal basis, clothing was much the same when at home, but as he wasn't too keen on being naked around an unfamiliar _yokai_ , baby or not, those things were typically intelligent enough that he desired a bit of modesty. He managed a pair of dark blue, slim, drawstring joggers (after removing a still-attached price tag) from the drawers in his bedroom and a black cotton tee. Once dressed, he checked on his guest in the kitchen and spared a glance at his phone again.

Five missed calls total, all the same number. And a voicemail, just one.

If it wasn't someone trying to sell him something, it was likely going to be someone from work trying to set him up on a fucking _omiai_ \-- yet another blind marriage arrangement.

He flopped down onto his sofa and turned on the TV as he pressed his phone to his ear, feeling something strange come over him that had nothing to do with some entertainment industry press conference for the latest scandal (an underage kid drinking a beer, or whatever it was today, was always super important) making the news. Nor the Docomo woman's too-cheerful electronic words rattling off the usual non-revelations of date and time and 'you have one message'.

Something in him... was _coiling_ , like lightning summoning up the will to strike.

'You told me to call you, lover.'

( _Palpitation_ ).

'But I don't think there's such a thing--.'

( _Sabo's voice_ ).

'As being this simplistic between us.'

( **End of message** ).

The world felt too quiet suddenly, all of it going into a white noise -- absent of the sound of a bear cub snarfing dinner, the TV announcements, and his own heavy breathing -- only the static of the rain pelting the windows and the sliding glass doors that led onto the balcony as he hit the button to replay the message. Replay the voice. Again. Again. Again.

'You told me to call you, lover.'  
Again. Again. Again.

Before his mind began working for him again and he attempted to call the number back, his thumb bashing at the screen of his phone as if it could make this all happen and connect them so much quicker.

 _Kochira wa NTT Docomo desu. Okake ni natta denwa wa denpa no todokanai basho ni--_ He ended the call there.

Out of service, she says. Or turned off, she says. Law gripped his phone tight so as to keep himself from throwing it; grit his teeth to keep himself from screaming out of frustration into a self-misdiagnosis of tourette's syndrome of 'FUCK' with tireless reprise.

And his shadow _shook_  
And the darkness crept.  
Something in it sparkled.  
And sparkled.  
And sparkled.

When thunder began to tremble above Nagano's cloud-covered ceiling, the bear cub in the kitchen hid itself beneath the table while Law stood up on trembling legs and squared his shoulders as he opened the sliding door to the balcony. And out there, he waited, waited, and waited out in the rain with his eyes on the horizon for lightning to finally strike.

But before it could, fire found him first. That feeling wrapped around him from behind in a crushing embrace, hot and dripping wet. And there were lips nuzzling against the small hoops in his ear, trailing a searing line down his neck of tiny nips and bites that withheld an innate urge to sink in and tear, smoothed over with a lap of tongue drinking up rain water from his skin, and blond hair dipped into his peripheral vision. Blond hair that begged to be pulled, gripped, pale and golden and gorgeous in his fist.

" _Tadaima_ ," Sabo murmured into his skin, and Law spun around, all of his strength thrown into the other man's body, shoving him against the glass door with force enough that his head cracked a violence of spider-web patterns beneath it -- the dragon didn't care and neither did he. And he gave into that urge, fingers gripping into Sabo's waves of hair and used that leverage to pull his head back, guiding his mouth against his own, and he tasted him -- sweet and spicy over the roof of his mouth -- _tasted_ the pull of his own depravity sucking at the tip of his tongue and this, this, _this_ hot glow of light burning invisible, new tattoos over the topography of his skin. Hands slid over his hips and down, grappling dragon-claw puncture wounds into his thighs. It was all that was necessary. Nothing else needed. No words, no explanations, no apologies, no poetry. Not even the tangential outbursts of thunder as lightning responded in jolts from his fingertips.

"I missed you," Law said as he gasped open-mouthed, the words sounding extraordinarily redundant as they came out. And over-simplified. But he didn't want to describe it -- the urge to tie the man up in rope and imprison him into their fate, tear up the world, engulf it into the rooms of his power and collapse each and every threshold until there wasn't a single place of existence where the dragon could ever hope to hide. Nothing, nowhere, no place -- each and every path undivided from the line of each other's sight.

It needed to be permanent this time. it needed to be for keeps. It needed to be for real. No more playing dead to what it was that he'd really wanted across the span of over one-hundred years. He'd decided to give up that old habit and abandon the pretending in a ditch about ten of those ago.

Hips ground against his own -- hard -- his cock was already filling up blood-thick against the soft knit of his pants, and his neck arched his jaw towards the downpour in the sky as he felt how much Sabo wanted him right back, straining in his own clothing. The cool of the rain was nothing -- _nothing_ that could save him now. 

"Law..." the other man whispered, lips moving, pressing just under his chin, "We need." ??? Yes, they did.  
**We Need**  
to fuck  
to make love  
to _move_.

And purify themselves from that ugly gaping divide of time between them and baptize themselves in sweat and spit and cum as he bathed the dragon in utmost _love_.

He took ahold of Sabo's wrist, intent on dragging him to the couch, but stumbled at the door only a few feet in as the dragon went still and immobile. Law's gaze followed, making some miracle of not getting lost in that swirling, misting, cerulean as he looked towards the open arch of the kitchen's entryway where a small bear was parked up on its haunches, a fleck of rice stuck to its black nose, most of its body lost in a roll of bellyfat, and oh--

Oh, damn it. He'd forgotten about the ~~cute~~ bear.

"If you don't mind, we were having a moment," he snapped at it, resuming forward and redirecting towards his far more private bedroom. "Watch TV if you're bored."

The cub's head ducked down. " _Sumimasen_."

....

....

....

"Did that bear... just _apologize_ to you?" Sabo asked.

"I... don't know, don't care," Law huffed as he pulled him into his bedroom and slammed the door behind him with the flat of his palm. He'd meant to pounce straight into Sabo immediately, throw him to the bed or to the floor and show him how he meant to break him to pieces into, but didn't.

There was a sparse, slow moment before their lips reconnected where he had the dragon clasped by his forearms and they looked at each other. Just simply _looked_ at each other. Sabo had not changed, the burn scar still over the right side of his face, looking like he'd gotten lost in the pages of a Jules Verne novel of a lofty journey up high on a balloon, or lost in Shinjuku and found himself in a boutique of EGA couture, either or both. Healthier than the last time they'd met, his cheeks fuller, thicker, and his lips smiling with his mysteries and abstracts. His skin held color and flushed at the apples from the cold, hair darkened and wet from the rain, turned it the color of spun straw back-lit by an Autumn golden hour, and his eyes were bright, shining, burning blue perfection.

Sabo was a light in the darkness.

Always had been, always would be.

A body of prose and a white-hot taunting language of movements, tugged into the curve of Law's own where they fit together, puzzle pieces that snapped into perfect place, lock and key. Pressing up against him with hands curling over the back of his neck, taking him down into a stumbling, trembling, sensory overload of rain-wet-cold but over-heated skin. Wildflowers scents overpowered a Chanel cologne, spicy and warm greens breathed into tunnel vision when his eyes fell shut. And Law had meant to speak, but there were lips in his way, garbling his sentences and his thoughts. Teeth scraping, upper-lip licked, biting ravenous _bits_ of him. A tongue curled about his own almost daintily by comparison, tasting his own hunger running back through the center of him. The beast's belly growled, but Law, patient in Sabo's impatience, had long ago come to terms with being starved of this touch, AND THUS--

Held his meal tightly, violently close, but intended to savor it all to the last drop. drip. drop.

Like his mouth was full of venom and the tongue sharing space against his own was the one and only antidote -- they'd both die without it. Like there was fever in his veins and working into his epithelium, and the dopamine rush was the ice water to bring down the temperature from its dangerous high -- they'd both burn up without it. Like this was a cliffside and these hands pushing Sabo's jacket off his shoulders to his elbows and the ones skittering beneath his shirt were the ropes of their supports -- they'd both fall without them.

Tangle of clothes going to the floor, stumble of shoes kicked off, intertwine, twining, and fallfallfall fallingdowndown d o w n

Down they fell. There was no coordination to the way they mutually dragged each other onto the pristine, unscathed and unused (virgin) bed, Law somehow ending up above the other man, pulling and shoving alike while clothes were shed, a cravat worked loose, and buttons picked apart and some torn more than others. He worked his t-shirt over his head and tossed it off somewhere into the abyss outside of that tunnel-vision gaze, peripheral gone away to black, and there were fingernails immediately scratching at his shoulderblades and raking down the hard muscles of his chest. Hips moved in a generous rut against his last remaining clothing, rubbing at him _just so_ , hot and hard. So painfully, ravenously hard, and Sabo, galvanized, then reached down between them to palm at his cock beneath that hellish fabric, fingers pressing exactly where Law needed it most.

And Law moaned, God did he ever moan, saliva painting his lips a glossy and shining red ruin. Shudders ran up and down his entire body, heat between his thighs as Sabo's hand around his cock gripped, cradled the head when it seeped pre-cum for him and smeared it around with his thumb while his spine arched up, lumbar separating from the vertebrae, his eyes shut tight and shifting beneath their lids. And he tensed, hissed through grit teeth as though struggling not to come apart at the seams from just touching Law. As though it was all he needed -- and yet it was still not quite enough as he breathed out and back in. If it were within Law's capability to make the man come undone so easily--

Come to pieces  
Come uncontrolled  
Come away  
and _come_

First, they needed to come completely undressed.

Hands pulled at Sabo's belt, zipper unzipped, and softer hands were at a softer waistbands in tandem, toyed with and pulled down and down and down, and Law's hips lifted until his cock bounced free, hard and thick and straight. He sat back, watched himself be watched with deep, dark blue intent as he removed that last layer of clothing entirely from his ankles, tossing his pants aside, and left Sabo to do the same for himself. No preliminaries, all instant gratification and greed and that desire to feel bare skin against bare skin, and the wet remnants of rain falling across Law's cheek from where his hair stuck flatly around his face.

Escaping down his jaw, across the scratch-lines down his chest-- and Sabo's hands planted on the bed as he shifted himself on his knees and crawled, languid movements as he crept in after that single drop and caught it like a snowflake disintegrating on the tip of his tongue, wet and hot and locking against rippling abdominals and softsoft skin. He trailed upwards and licked around a pale, pert nipple, grazed it with his teeth, and Law's stomach fluttered, sensitive. Moaning, trembling beneath that mouth, he lunged himself forward and pinned the dragon's perfect body back down to the bed and slid between his inner thighs.

He kissed with a fury like there wasn't going to be a tomorrow.  
Like that ending wouldn't come with a comforting afterlife.

And this moment was all there was, all he had (because you never really know, do you?), thrusting his cock next to the perfect curve of Sabo's own laying beautifully full and erect on his belly, and listened to the sweetsweet music of his moans reverberating against his tongue. Splayed fingers lifted beneath him, gripped his thigh and used it to spread him open from one side as his other arm mindlessly reached out with his power to summon lubricant to his free hand. It took a few tries to get it right, tossing aside irrelevant, similarly-shaped bottles with his focus and center all broken up and shaken, frustrated, famished.

"You wanted to tell me what love feels like..." Sabo laughed softly, his low voice breathless against Law's mouth, "I remember it. I heard everything, your every thought. If you can fill me up with all of them, then do so -- I've always wanted this. More than you know."

Finally, _finally_. Yes. "I will. Move you. Sabo-ya."

And he lifted himself back with the remnants of a shuddering gasp on his tongue and spread Sabo's thighs further apart and pushed them up, up, against his chest, revealing the pucker of his asshole, so tiny and pink and clean that Law couldn't resist. He couldn't. He dove in hungrily, tracing that small clench with his tongue, laved him with saliva, slipping just the tip of his middle finger inside. He licked beside it and all around, brushed soft caresses of lip-skin just underneath that shallow penetration, listening to Sabo's salient moans go desperate and incoherent.

The way he wanted. Because the more desperate Sabo became, maybe--

Just maybe.  
He couldn't ever leave again.

He couldn't - he couldn't. Law wouldn't allow it this time. He growled at the thought as he licked and kissed higher, muffled into the junction between thigh and groin where Law's teeth sank into the tender skin there and made his mark. No words, just inhaling his male scent, biting at his _mate_ with animal sounds laced with the deepest want and need that no amount of nights could possibly fulfill. Not after so many years had been spent longing for the dragon's touch, for his kisses, for their bodies that moved as a shadow of one, useless and spent of all words.

(But Law did love Sabo's poetry, loved how he always whispered his pretty words in _that certain way_ as he guided Law through orgasm after orgasm before painting his insides hot and white. It never mattered what was ever actually said; so lost, he could never understand, anyway).

He allowed his finger to slide out before he drenched the smooth skin between the man's ass over-abundantly with lube, letting it drool down, cold and slick. Coating his fingers, he then delved back inside, pressing as far in as he could this time -- smoothing in and out, in and out, in and out, sliding a second into that hot, silky tightness as he listened to Sabo cry out for him with his pitch gone lower and softer, lust-filled, and disgustingly needy. In another place, another time, Law might have done the same, moaned and whimpered like he couldn't live without this. Like it was all he needed, all he wanted. Just to feel a little more alive and whole.

He might have moaned then, too, were his mouth not already busied, lips kneading into an especially sensitive point just beneath the tightening skin of Sabo's balls, hairless and smooth and heavy. He took one into his mouth, mindful of his teeth, gently rolling it over the soft of his tongue, bathing it wet with french-kissed flourish, saliva shimmering as that silky skin tightened even further. Fingers shifted, massaged, finding just that perfect place--

And his name was **torn** from Sabo's clenched throat  
as though the _yokai_ were something sacrosanct.

clenched like it wanted to climb up into his body.  
clenched his thighs, his stomach  
clenched around fingers, wet and rubbing and stretching  
clenched that tight, hot, perfect little pucker of muscle--

"Law.. Law Law... oh, God--"

And broke apart with his cock untouched as he reached cloud nine. Coming in hot and wet spurts of white all over his chest and stomach, back arching like it was about to snap, and his eyes going metallic blue under their cracked, heavy-lids with their golden lashes shrouding vertical-slits of pupils.

"Keep going. Keep going. I can keep going," Sabo whispered (begged) passionately towards the pillow as his head tossed against it, blond curls covering his folded brow. His breath hitching and panting, chest collapsing more than it had the chance to rise, "Do it now. I will tangle in all of your threads, your thoughts."

Where Sabo pulled, Law would always drag -- that was the way of things, always had been, always would be. But Law wasn't thinking of these things, thinking of nothing at all as his fingers withdrew from slick, twitching muscles that continued to pulse in the aftermath of orgasm that teetered on the brink of going multiple. He wanted to feel it around him when he came undone with more than just his hands; he wanted to feel himself tied up in those trembling limbs and soft exhalations.

Knees shifted against the bed cover, hand running through the mess of sweat and cum pooled on Sabo's stomach before he encircled his blood-engorged dick and gave it few slow strokes, coating himself in the other man's fluids. Lowering himself down again, his lips touched the blonde's cheek simply and gently as his palms slid under pale, muscular thighs, spreading them up and apart as his cock pressed against the crevice of Sabo's ass, up and down, then he began to press his way into his hot, slick insides, and felt that heat -- _God, that heat_ \-- that inner dragon fire burning him up like the sun lighting up his every nerve.

( _Yes, yesyesyes, yes - I can feel you_ \--  
and all of it belonged to Law. _You are **m i n e**_.).

A broken cry was muffled as one of Sabo's hands flew to his mouth, bit into the backs of his knuckles as Law plunged his hips deeply, splitting him inch by inch by inch all of the way in, not allowing a moment for adjustment as he drew back. Unable to deny an animal instinct to plunge straight back in. No matter how much it could hurt, it wouldn't matter. There was no such thing pain, there was only the movement. He moved, _moved him_ and moved _into_ him. Move move move. Sabo's body open and prone beneath him felt like a hot, writhing, tight, crush of heaven around his cock. Tightening, constricting, as though he meant to drag Law down with him into a serpent's coil of suffocation, so tight tight tight and tighter still...

No more waiting. No more pain. No more.

"Sabo-ya..." _I've needed you so much, for so long_ , he'd wanted to say, but couldn't.

It was lost in nearly a whimper, helpless, as Law dropped his head into the dragon's shoulder and licked the sweat from his clavicle, salt glistening all over his lips. Hips grinding, rocking in and out and in, immersing himself in kisses, moans, pleasure-ridden sighs, and pure incoherence. Spread legs were clutching his flanks while dragon claws sank into the skin of his back, puncturing bleeding holes of stinging crimson running red-hot down his skin -- all crocodile eyes and crocodile mind. All base and primitive instincts taking him over as Law deepened his movements, aggressively pounding into his lover with rough slaps of skin against skin, so much louder than the muffled cries of the man beneath him.

"You--You feel so--" the dragon moaned, tossing his head back, arching, his lips falling into black-blue hair drenched with rain and sweat, kissing him mindlessly where his voice failed. The words he couldn't bring himself say were all echoing inside of Law's head -- the language of his body flowing through him, prickling through their fragile bond and into his skin like an electrical storm raging somewhere outside his window. It called to him, spoke to him--

(Harder, faster, moremoremore **m o r e** )

 _You feel so like **love** , you feel so like forever,_ it said, _You are made whole by my halves -- what is it that behooves you to tangle as you do?_

(You -- _when I can't stand myself anymore, all I want is_ you).

And Law moaned, just moaned and moaned, mouthed Sabo's name into that brutal rhythm because he felt _so good_ , back and forth, back and forth, and in and out. Fucking him with a harsh, percussive, unsteady and broken pace -- losing himself in Sabo's squeezing, tight ass, drawing him in a seemingly deeper darkness with every downwards grind of his hips. It felt so good that it ached and burned, and when the burn became too much, the pleasure would reprise with an intensity that shook him into more of a trembling, swearing mess, sinking his teeth into Sabo's neck violently because he was going to give. Going to cum so hard, so fast, so deep--

"Fuck.Fffuck-- _Nnn_..."

But so was Sabo -- again. The sense of urgency present in the erratic quality of his breath, puffing against Law's temple, distressing wisps of dark hair. His insides were twitching, hips writhing as though trying to push himself down on Law's cock deeper and harder, clenching, clenching up tight. It took no more than Law's hand intervening, thumb brushing over the flushed head of his dripping erection before Sabo was spasming around him and he felt so pure and _perfect_ , clawing at his skin and drawing more blood, back arching away from the bed. Wave after wave, wet, hot, pulsing and dripping down Law's hand before he planted it on the bed cover and rode out his own last few reckless thrusts.

And only then did he go completely silent, oxygen asphyxiated from him with the remains of his voice caught in the back of his throat -- unable to breathe. He shook and shook and shook, burying his cum deep into Sabo's ass in sharp jerks of his hips as his arms wrapped around him and clung. The arrhythmia of his heart restarted, pulsing up just as he pulsed down, and he could see the stars at the backs of his eyes. He could see his own self falling down from them.

Fallen angel.

Fallen long ago.

But only one of them had the burn-scars to prove their plummet through the atmosphere.

For a long time, they simply held each other, breathing each other in, pressing kisses here and there as the sweat cooled on their skin and cum drooled perversely satisfying out of Sabo's body and onto the bed. His arms were warm around Law's shoulders, and the moment was flawless-- golden. Angel and dragon, exactly how they were never meant until fate decided something different, and they were tangled, tangled, twisted up in the strings in the forever of their immortality.

To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour. Or so went Blake's 'Auguries Of Innocence'.

"If I tell you that I love you now, would you give me poetry?" Sabo eventually asked, pulling Law closer still as he traced along the heart-shape of a tattoo on his shoulder.

"Mmm," he appeared to deliberate for a moment, rolling onto his side on the soaked bed-cover, nuzzling his lips at the bruise on the dragon's neck where his teeth had sunk in too deeply. That mark. That possessive mark. He wasn't sorry for it, nor for the one at his inner thigh. "Even if I don't have any to give you, would you still say it?"

"I would," he said.

(And yet he didn't actually say it).

Instead, "Let me stay here with you," Sabo continued, his voice soft as his fingers lifted up from Law's shoulder to brush up the nape of his neck and work into his hair, "Let me sleep here in this bed with you every night. Let me always see your wings. I've decided that I want to write a book about the world. So let me. It will have a good ending."

Like now -- the world was already ending in a perfect way, and would end yet again in a few day's time as the sakura would soon begin to fall. When Law's eyes closed, and when they opened again; when people die and when people are born; when things are found and others are lost. In the rise of the sun and its fall unto the darkness given illumination by way of the moon and the rabbit trapped in that cycle....

Was how the world ended, and how it began.

Not with a flash of falling sky. Not with the burn of civilization. Not with its dying screams.

There are beginnings. And there are endings. And there were times when Law, going silent and hush, would only lean in to kiss Sabo's lips and trace the contour of his jaw with his fingertips to connect with him at the middles.

"Then stay."

Something outside of the room crashed, the sound of glass breaking, but he didn't care. There were two things in the world that held value enough to Trafalgar Law for him to so much as stir, and both were within this room. One, propped into the corner as a silent sentinel of a trusted blade, dormant in its sheathe. And the other... with a stretch of his body, a stretch of reality, was gently swept up and engulfed within the arms of soft, black wings with their exceptional shadows and living, moving feathers.

"I will."

Flower petals began to cascade down around them.

Lightning lit up the city skyline.

But neither of them so much as blinked.

 

\-----

**April 4, 2015 - Taito-ku, Tokyo --**

Law was a darkness in the light.

He knew what it meant to give things definition, to give them shadow and give them shape.

He'd learned over time that too much light could sometimes be blinding, that there needed to be that perfect balance of darks in it to be able to properly see anything at all. He'd learned from watching Sabo that joy had a deeper meaning to someone who knew what it meant to suffer. He knew from his own experiences that suffering had a deeper meaning to someone who knew what it meant to feel joy.

Behind every teardrop there is a smile. And behind every smile there is a likewise teardrop.

All things had their place.

Even Law had his own. Not as a _yokai_ , but an angel -- a _daitenshi_ in his own right, however artificially made and fallen from a grace he'd never known as he'd not been born into it as his predecessor had been. But even Corazon, too, had black wings -- angels are not meant to know the meaning of death, but once it is there, it cannot be erased. But that was very irrelevant. It didn't matter. The truth of Law's existence was an old argument against Sabo that the dragon had won long ago, and Marco, with senses sharper than anyone's, had confirmed it.

And it had not even really been much of an argument by definition, but it was, for lack of a better word, and the only term that lent him a bit of dignity when his lover had laughed at him so hard that he could have ruptured his spleen.

WHERE did you learn to be THIS self-deprecating?

' _I know what you are and I know its meaning_ ,' Sabo had eventually said, smiling at him broadly, ' _I can feel you deep under my skin. The only one who is confused is yourself_.'

 **You are not a monster. You are an archangel, Trafalgar D. Water Law**.

Maybe that hadn't always been the case. Maybe there was a time when something dark and malevolent had conquered his spirit. But that time was no longer. That thing was no more.

There was, in that long ago history, a creature who wrought the pain of his own existence in a blight rained down upon humanity. All up until the point where he could no longer discern his existence from the life he lived and the death he brought upon so many doorsteps... And the pattern, the ritual of it -- the hearts he'd cut from his victims. The victims he made out of men who were young, blond, blue-eyed and striking. Men who looked so much like Sabo, when he thought actually about it (but he tried not to).

There was, in that long ago history, a time where he'd ripped his stomach open and let its contents all fall out without a second glance, filleted his hands apart on his nodachi before gouging his heart straight through. There was a time where he had been something else. An _other_. Until Sabo found him, sensed him, the missing place for his own burgeoning soul that he descended upon, pulled down by all of their strings from his higher echelons upon the rooftops of the world he traversed, had explored far and wide. And when he blazed into the room with fire in his hands and with his volatile gaze, poetry on his tongue that his eyes refused to translate, and sifted through the ruin of Law's innards to push them back into place, scattered in the pool of his own gore... there was a change. There was a difference.

When Sabo looked at Law, when he could see deep into his bloody, unhinged mangle and could see the bottom of his lungs peeking through the prison bars of his ribcage slowly inflate and deflate and cling to his last frail breaths, what he saw was that of a devil's empty shell. An _Oni_. The demonic abominations that became of self-actualized beings who were overcome by the tragedy of living, torment twisting them into unrepentant, unfeeling creatures of destruction. But what Sabo pieced back together with his bare hands came into shape as something more startling and stunning. An angel in his arms, clinging to his limbs, taking shelter in his throat.

A celestial entity made whole and immaculate by Sabo's half.

But the dragon didn't like to remember these details; he had been manic deep down inside, he'd once sadly explained, but not by the sight of his gore nor the feel of his guts all slippery in his fingers (that, he said, was a beautiful moment. Had made him feel so close to Law. So intimate. So significant). The truth was that, since ancient history, Sabo had been alone. Fire dragons were overly-pompous, disgusting beings of conceit that -- had they not gone largely extinct -- he bore no association with beyond the blood. He'd run from that life, clinging instead to those he considered his true brothers, Ace and Luffy, a bit too much just for some semblance of companionship.

And when he finally met Law -- Law, who belonged to him and to no other; Law, who called to his fire in a way that his own kind never could -- after so many years of waiting to find that missing piece of himself... after thousands of years of loneliness. A year, a month, or maybe even days longer than that, then it might have been too late for them. Law could have destroyed himself, leaving Sabo forever alone in his own blinding light.

There had been times, he admitted, during the long stretch of absence between them, that thought made him feel as though he were going to lose his mind. There were nightmares of dead angels in his arms with shattered, grotesquely sagging wings. Sometimes he lost sight of himself... a fear stealing over him that fueled his desperation and his obsession, made him weak, made him do things that he'd forever regret.

But now?  
Simply,  
Sabo loved him.  
Unafraid.  
Out loud.

The sakura were falling again, this time over Ueno park on a brilliant, warm Sunday afternoon. There were crowds of people spread out over blankets everywhere for _hanami_ , the smell of barbequed meat delicious in the air, voices rising up in animated chatter over the sound of some distant traditional music, and there were pink petals trickling softly down through the umbrellas of blossomed branches. There were petals in Law's hair, brushing his face, and decorating his shoulders as he reclined with his back against one of many tree trunks and watched as a colorful butterfly alighted upon Bepo's nose and made the bear cub go cross-eyed.

He was a handful sometimes, Bepo. That was the bear cub's name, in any event (it sounded like a heartbeat, Law thought, _bepo, bepo, bepo_ ). After several mishaps, broken glasses, chewed-up documents, and a penchant for crashing into the main bedroom and heaving himself up on the bed at ungodly hours of the morning, Law had insisted for a while that his name should be 'Asshole'.

Sabo, infinitely more patient, hadn't agreed.

Until, that was, nearly the same event had taken place, only in this instance, they'd been naked together beneath the sheets, lost in the throes of each other, and Sabo had been mere seconds from balls deep inside of Law... when suddenly they had a lap full of energetic white fur between them. And a very heady mood thoroughly spoiled.

It began some debate over whether 'Asshole' was more appropriate than the dragon's suggestion of 'cockblock'. If the tiny bear weren't so damned ~~adorable~~ pathetic most of the time, Law would have punted him back out on the streets, but as it was, _bakemono_ were slow to come into their full power. And he couldn't bring himself to do that to a largely helpless creature.

Maybe there was some of that angelic benevolence in him, after all. So he asserted.

A few photographs Sabo had taken that were now hanging on his apartment's yellow wall that depicted them curled up together, napping on the sofa, spoke a bit different.

A pair of paws closed over a black nose, but the butterfly was faster than Bepo, fluttering off and compelling the bear to give chase across the grass. Law sighed (not fondly, no), and looked up as Sabo approached, dark sunglasses over his blue eyes, out of breath from a too-competitive-to-be-normal game of frisbee between himself, his two brothers, and a few other friends of theirs who were all still off roughhousing with each other in the grass, attempting to drag a righteously ruffled phoenix down with them in their foray.

"He's here! Have you seen him yet?" Sabo asked as he dropped down beside the ~~yokai~~ _daitenshi_ , grabbing a water bottle from their belongings and drinking from it deeply.

Law knew who he meant.

As inconspicuously as possible, he pointed across the grass and through the trees, towards the direction of a picnic blanket where a young man sat with his arm draped about a beautiful woman's shoulders, mouth open wide, exuberant, laughing at something that she'd said. The purity of the warm sun was glinting off of his pale blonde hair, glowing on his skin, and he was shining, handsome, full of life, full of youth.

 _Kuroashi no Sanji_ , alive and well... for the time being. Their only incentive for visiting Ueno that day was because they knew that Sanji would be there and it was a rare opportunity to catch a glimpse of him candidly, without arousing suspicion or appearing as stalkers. Law wondered if it was fate or coincidence that the man had come back to Tokyo after all of this time. It was convenient, in any case, even if Zoro was still off watching him morosely from the sidelines. And from what Law could gather from his incensed shouts rising up above the sounds of the festivities, along with the sounds of Luffy's raucous laughter, was in the midst of being pulled into a frisbee session that was likely going to escalate into violence before long.

"He's just as gorgeous as before. Are you sure he's not mine, after all?" Sabo asked as he slid his shades up into his hair, "I think I'd make a good father; I'd teach him to be a fine young dragon."

Law shook his head. "Spiritually, if you must. Biologically, no. But I don't think that he'll actually ever become that mature to see scales again -- I never thought he'd live this long to begin with... even still, I thought it better that he be given a chance to live, be human. But he's a ticking time bomb, and at any point he could begin to lose cohesion. I may be able to remedy that now. In the meantime, though...."

"He seems happy," Sabo said, sliding himself closer beside Law and smiled as a tattooed arm came around his waist. He relaxed at the angel's side, let his head rest against the strength of his shoulder comfortably. "If I were you, I would feel the same. I wouldn't want to take him away from all of this until its absolutely necessary."

Law replied with a soft sound of agreement as he pressed his cheek into Sabo's hair. The cherry blossoms fell in the dawning Spring air, lively, spirited, twirling about in the breeze with the gentle, white-pink memories of yet another season falling down to the earth. Together, they listened to the sounds of men and women drunk on too much sake and well-wishes alike, scattered in the breaks of all those tiny, heart-shape petals. In all of that symbology, the beauty of life in its transience.

Life, for them, was no such fleeting thing. As Law's fingers sought out Sabo's own to lace, intertwine, and clasp together, there was a literal 'forever' connotation somewhere behind it. Less simple than descriptor alone, but special, surprising and complex by the weight of how powerful his emotions could resound whenever they touched. Like sakura, Law sometimes felt like he was blossoming. Sometimes he felt like he was dying. And sometimes he felt like he was being reborn.

But whatever it was -- ".. This... feels right."

"It does, doesn't it? It's like waiting for the other shoe to drop," Sabo murmured, then turned his head to capture Law's mouth in a long, slow, heady kiss that lingered on and on and on, nuzzling brushes of soft, pink skin. The barest hint of tongue, gentle, flowed between one press of lips into the next. He could taste ash and it was sweet in his mouth, the mark of a life engulfed in curling flames as electricity was called forth to crackle through his veins. He should have been used to this by now, but even after so many years, the fingertips that reached out to comb through golden blond hair couldn't help their trembling, overeager.

"If we start this now, we probably aren't going to be able to stop."

Sabo was thinking it, but Law possessed enough voice of rationale to actually say it.

"Later then, my love," the dragon replied in a quick hush, eyes flashing and glowing fiercely cerulean -- a sky darkening over with many promises Law knew he would keep, "Just wait. I will bend you, play you, breathe you, clutch you, and _take you_. I would burn the world for you, if that's what you want... but your body should suffice, I think."

For the last 120 years, this had always been the bottom line between them.

The corner of Law's mouth lifted in a cocky, lazy smirk that pressed into a kiss on Sabo's forehead.

"Your poetry moves me as always, Sabo-ya."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, I want to thank [opscifiandfantasy](http://opscifiandfantasy.tumblr.com/) for hosting this event. People should have seen me go frantic this last week to complete this. My eye-circles, I can assume, would have made even Law concerned. XD But it was a fun challenge to write for! Even if I feel like this is more a horror/tragedy with fantasy elements than vice-versa... I get my 'E' for Effort. ;P 
> 
> Anyway, if this isn't all you hoped a SaboLaw/LawSabo fic could be, or even remotely what it should be, don't worry, because I'm not going to disagree. I don't kid myself about my weird, convoluted imagination. When let loose, will give everyone migraines if I let it. Including myself.
> 
> This is actually a mix between side-story and back story, which is why it has converging plot elements with no actual plot taking place. There are **two more** stories coming up later that will make up a series (I have miles of story already written); the main one is SanZo feat. Law in present day that the ending of this fic is hinting towards. The other is a MarcoAce back story that was originally going to be my challenge entry (less emo, more fantasy) but I was hit by a remarkable block. D: Still, I like the thought of all paths coming together intricately in all major reveals at the end. I suppose only multi-shippers will really care to see the entirety of the plot, and I don't expect many readers on this one due to the rare pair, so if even a couple people have enjoyed this, I will be positively jubilant. XD 
> 
> If you like this fic and want to see more similar to it and/or wish to help my motivation along, please do comment and let me know what you think!


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